Flodden Field

'Twas on a sultry summer noon,
The sky was blue, the breeze was still,
And Nature with the robes of June
Had clothed the slopes of Flodden Hill,-
As rode we slowly o'er the plain
'Mid wayside flowers and sprouting'grain;
The leaves on every bough seemed sleeping,
And wild bees murmured in their mirth,
So pleasantly, it seemed as earth
A jubilee was keeping!

And canst thou be, unto my soul
I said, that dread Northumbrian field,
Where war's terrific thunder's roll
Above two banded kingdoms pealed?
From out the forest of his spears
Ardent imagination hears
The crash of Surrey's onward charging;
While curtel-axe and broadsword gleam
Opposed, a bright, wide coming stream,
Like Solway's tide enlarging.

Hark to the turmoil and the shout,
The war-cry, and the cannon's boom!
Behold the struggle and the rout,
The broken lance and draggled plume!
Bome to the earth, with deadly force,
Comes down the horseman and his horse;
Round boils the battle like an ocean,
While stripling blithe and veteran stern
Pour forth their life-blood on the fern,
Amid its fierce commotion!

Mown down like swaths of summer flowers,
Yes! on the cold earth there they lie,
The lords of Scotland's bannered towers,
The chosen of her chivalry!
Commingled with the vulgar dead,
Perhaps lies many a mitred head;
And thou, the vanguard onwards leading,
Who left the sceptre for the sword,
For battle-field the festal board,
Liest low amid the bleeding!

Yes! here thy life-star knew decline,
Though hope, that strove to be deceived,
Shaped thy lone course to Palestine,
And what it wished full oft believed:—
An unhewn pillar on the plain
Marks out the spot where thou wast slain;
There pondering as I stood, and gazing
On its gray top the linnet sang,
And, o'er the slopes where conflict rang,
The quiet sheep were grazing.

And were the nameless dead unsung,
The patriot and the peasant train,
Who like a phalanx round thee clung,
To find but death on Flodden Plain?
No! many a mother's melting lay
Mourned o'er the bright flowers wede away;
And many a maid, with tears of sorrow,
Whose locks no more were seen to wave,
Wept for the beauteous and the brave,
Who came not on the morrow.