Series 1 > Grameid: an heroic poem descriptive of the campaign of Viscount Dundee in 1689, and other pieces

122
PANURGI PHILOCABALLI
[56-75
Florilegae glomerantur apes ad roscida florum
Pabula, cum virides nemorum praedantur honores.
Deserit ille domes vacuas, charosque Penates,
Grandaevumque patrem, parvosque sub ubere natos
Et nollente gravem jam conjuge corripit hastam.
Et nati invitis rapuere parentibus arma.
Hie clangore tubae audito linquit aratrum,
Et galeam capiti laterique accommodat ensem,
Loricamque humeris confestim fortibus aptat.
Pandite Pierides fontes Permessidis undae,
Et juga Parnassi, totumque Helicona ciete
Ut meminisse queam, cantuque referre sonoro,
Ingentem virtute Ducem, pro Caesare qui turn
Exule Grampiacis picta intulit agmina castris.
Exciti quique acre viri, quae quemque secuta est
Ductorem chlamydata cohors, quibus Abria mater
Floruit alma viris, quibus et gaudebat alumnis.
Non tamen haec dubia referam mihi tradita fama,
Sed quae oculis coram vidi, quaeque auribus hausi,
Pandere fert animus, saeclisque aperire futuris.
Primus hyperboreis Glengarius acer ab oris
the aged father, the little children at the breast, and seizes
his heavy spear though his wife refuse it. There the sons have
torn their weapons from the resisting hands of parents. When
the pibroch sounds they leave the plough, and forthwith gird
sword to side, fit helm to head, and mail coat to their brawny
shoulders.
Flow ye Pierian springs, Permessian waters ! open ye heights
of Parnassus and summon all Helicon that I may recall, and in
sonorous verse relate, the story of the General, great in virtue, who
then for the exiled Caesar gathered the tartaned host to the
Grampian camp, and whom the plaided clansmen—with trumpet
sound aroused—now follow as their leader; men through whom
their nursing-mother Lochaber attained her fame ; sons in whom
she gloried. No doubtful tales,1 brought to me by report, will
I relate ; but it is my purpose to unfold, and to open to future
times, that only which I have seen with my own eyes, which I
have heard with my own ears.
First, from his northern shores, the brave Glengarry leads three
1 The lifelike descriptions which follow betoken the records of an eye¬
witness.