Flora's Lament

More dark is my soul than the scenes of yon islands,
Dismantled of all the gay hues that they wore;
For lost is my hope since the Prince of the Highlands
'Mong these, his wild mountains, can meet me no more.
Ah! Charlie, how wrung was this heart when it found thee
Forlorn, and the die of thy destiny cast;
Thy Flora was firm 'mid the perils around thee,
But where were the brave of the land that had own'd thee,
That she--only she--should be true to the last?

The step's in the bark on the dark heaving waters,
That now should have been on the floor of a throne;
And, alas for auld Scotland, her sons and her daughters!
Thy wish was their welfare, thy cause was their own.
But 'lorn may we sigh where the hill-winds awaken,
And weep in the glen where the cataracts foam,
And sleep where the dew-drops are deep on the bracken;
Thy foot has the land of thy fathers forsaken,
And more--never more will it yield thee a home.

Oh! yet when afar, in the land of the stranger,
If e'er on thy spirit remembrance may be
Of her who was true in these moments of danger,
Reprove not the heart that still lives but for thee.
The night-shrouded flower from the dawning shall borrow
A ray, all the glow of its charms to renew,
But Charlie, ah! Charlie, no ray to thy Flora
Can dawn from thy coming to chase the dark sorrow
Which death, in thine absence, alone can subdue.