Ossian Collection > Gaelic bards

234 ORIGINAL POEMS.
Out she drew the chieftain's dagger,
As she hurled this angry cry
At the boor who gloomed before her,
With his dull and threatening eye.
And she struck him down, and left him
Stretched beneath the sunbeams there,
Like a wild fowl by the falcon
Swept from out the fields of air.
Then, alone, their dead they carried,
While one nursed the manly brow —
Nursed, it on her bosom gently,
Like a holy, heavenly vow.
And one — tenderly she drove him
To the sad and solemn ground,
Where the hero's dust reposes,
With the mouldering ashes round.
Soft and slowly there we leave them —
Chieftain ! may thine ashes rest,
Peaceful as the voice of prayer
From a calm, untroubled breast!
Long as sound the breezes o'er them,
Sound the voice of psalms beside ;
And spread Christ's peace- speaking Gospel
From thy green sod, far and wide !
Sir Lachlan Mòr MacLean is bui'ied in the churchyard
of Kilchoman, Islay, near the south wall of the church.
This serves to explain the reference to psalms, (fcc, in the
concluding lines.