And what cared they for idle thanks
From foreign prince and peer?
What virtue had such honeyed words
The exiles' hearts to cheer?
What mattered it that men should vaunt,
And loud and fondly swear,
That higher feat of chivalry
Was never wrought elsewhere?
They bore within their breasts the grief
That fame can never heal--
The deep, unutterable woe
Which none save exiles feel.
Their hearts were yearning for the land
They ne'er might see again--
For Scotland's high and heathered hills,
For mountain, loch, and glen--
For those who haply lay at rest
Beyond the distant sea,
Beneath the green and daisied turf
Where they would gladly be!


XII.

Long years went by. The lonely isle
In Rhine's impetuous flood
Has ta'en another name from those
Who bought it with their blood:
And though the legend does not live,
For legends lightly die,