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Edwin Muir - Robert the Bruce (To Douglas in Dying)
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`MY life is done, yet all remains,
The breath has gone, the image not,
The furious shapes once forged in heat
Live on though now no longer hot.
`Steadily the shining swords
In order rise, in order fall,
In order on the beaten field
The faithful trumpets call.
`The women weeping for the dead
Are not sad now but dutiful,
The dead men stiffening in their place
Proclaim the ancient rule.
`Great Wallace`s body hewn in four,
So altered, stays as it must be.
0 Douglas do not leave me now,
For past your head I see
`My dagger sheathed in Comyn`s heart
And nothing there to praise or blame,
Nothing but order which must be
Itself and still the same.
`But that Christ hung upon the Cross,
Comyn would rot until time`s end
And bury my sin in boundless dust,
For there is no amend.
`In order; yet in order run
All things by unreturning ways,
If Christ live not, nothing is there
For sorrow or for praise.`
So the king spoke to Douglas once
A little while before his death,
Having outfaced three English kings
And kept a people`s faith.
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