The Bagpiper

No more the high pitched pipes will wail,
No more will chill the tepid souls,
No more the patriotic tale.
But now, now noiseless,
They rest like shades in holes,
Impatient and joyless
Until the piper warms again the vale
Where men shall drink his songs like ale.

The minstrels too are gone away
As if in search for places where
Men love the wild and woeful lays
And want the groaning
Of the discontented airs
With their mournful monotoning;
For homes and castle hearths play they
Whose songs are melancholically gay.

But here, alas, no piper winds
His notes where men are more like beasts
Than men, where men are deaf and blind
With their own dignity –
There is no room for song-filled feasts
Or warrior sanguinity.
He sets out now with hopes to find
A world of wonder still left behind.

Sometimes, I wander through the night
And sit among the ruins where
The ghostly bard in doleful delight
Once played his dirges
Merrily and majestically clear
As the moon emerges
Sullen with the gloom of night
Yet lamentingly low and light.

Ah! often I recall those airs
I used to hear—they stir me still,
The rousing and reverberant heirs.
Still they are haunting
With Plutonic and primeval thrills;
Though dim, still daunting,
In some solitary sepulcher
Waiting to rise and shake the tepid air.