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Then up spake a Scottish maiden,
With her ear unto the ground:
"Dinna ye hear it?--dinna ye hear it?
The pipes o' Havelock sound!"
Hushed the wounded man his groaning;
Hushed the wife her little ones;
Alone they heard the drum-roll
And the roar of Sepoy guns.
But to sounds of home and childhood
The Highland ear was true;
As her mother's cradle crooning
The mountain pipes she knew.
Like the march of soundless music
Through the vision of the seer,--
More of feeling than of hearing,
Of the heart than of the ear,--
She knew the droning pibroch
She knew the Campbell's call:
"Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's,--
The grandest o' them all."
Oh! they listened, dumb and breathless,
And they caught the sound at last;
Faint and far beyond the Goomtee
Rose and fell the piper's blast!
Then a burst of wild thanksgiving
Mingled woman's voice and man's;
"God be praised!--the march of Havelock!
The piping of the clans!"
Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance,
Sharp and shrill as swords at strife,
Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call,
Stinging all the air to life.


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