The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, with memoir of the author.

118 THE LAY OF [CANTO IV.
II.
Unlike the tide of human time,
Which, though it change in ceaseless flow,
Retains each grief, retains each crime,
Its earliest course was doom'd to know;
And, darker as it downward bears,
Is stain'd with past and present tears.
Low as that tide has ebb'd with me,
It still reflects to Memory's eye
The hour my brave, my only boy,
Fell by the side of great Dundee.l
Why, when the volleying musket play'd
Against the bloody Highland blade,
Why was not I beside him laid!Enough-he died the death of fame;
Enough-he died with conquering Gremme.2
1 The Viscount of Dundee, slain in the battle of Killicrankie.
2 [ " Some of the most interesting passages of the poem are
those in which the author drops the business of his story to
moralize and apply to his own situation the images and reflections it has suggested. After concluding one Canto with
an account of the warlike array which was prepared for the
reception of the English invaders, he opens the succeeding
one with the following beautiful verses, (Stanzas i. and ii.)
"There are several other detached passages of equal
beauty,3 which might be quoted in proof of the effect which
is produced by this dramatic interference of the narrator."JEFFREY.]
8 [No one will dissent from this, who reads, in particular,
the first two and heart-glowing stanzas of Canto VI.-now,
by association of the past, rendered the more affecting.-ED.]