Change! change! the mournful story Of all that 's been before; The wrecks of perish'd glory Bestrewing every shore: The shatter'd tower and palace, In every vale and glen, In broken language tell us Of the fleeting power of men.
Change! change! the plough is sweeping O'er some scene of household mirth, The sickle hand is reaping O'er some ancient rural hearth-- Where the mother and the daughter In the evenings used to spin, And where little feet went patter, Full often out and in.
Change! change! for all things human, Thrones, powers of amplest wing, Have their flight, and fall in common With the meanest mortal thing-- With beauty, love, and passion, With all of earthly trust, With life's tiniest wavelet dashing, Curling, breaking into dust.
Where arose in marble grandeur The wall'd cities of the past, The sullen winds now wander O'er a ruin-mounded waste. Low lies each lofty column; The owl in silence wings O'er floors, where, slow and solemn, Paced the sandal'd feet of kings.
Still change! Go thou and view it, All desolately sunk, The circle of the Druid, The cloister of the monk; The abbey boled and squalid, With its bush-maned, staggering wall; Ask by whom these were unhallow'd-- Change, change hath done it all.
Yon old temple pile, where the moon dimly flashes O'er gray roof, tall window, sloped buttress, and base, O'erarches the ashes, the now silent ashes, Of the noblest, the bravest, of Scotia's race. How hallow'd yon spot where a hero is lying, Embalm'd in the holiness worship bedews, The lamb watching over the sleep of the lion, Religion enthroned on the tomb of the Bruce!
Far other and fiercer the moments that crown'd him, Than those that now creep o'er yon old temple pile, And sterner the music that storm'd around him, Than the anthem that peals through the long-sounding aisle, When his bugle's fierce tones with the war-hum was blending, And, with claymores engirdled, and banners all loose, His rough-footed warriors, to battle descending, Peal'd up to the heavens the war-cry of Bruce.
I hear him again, with deep voice proclaiming-- Let our country be free, or with freedom expire; I see him again, with his great sword o'erflaming The plume-nodding field, like a banner of fire. Still onward it blazes, that red constellation, In its passage no pause, to its flashing no truce: Oh, the pillar of glory that led forth our nation From shackles and chains, was the sword of the Bruce.