20 AUGUST 1927, Page 11

A Lament

O LONELY house upon the regal moors Set where the heather flows in purple streams, 'Tis long since children played about your doors,

And cheerful firelight flashed in quickening gleams.

The Northern wind sighs through your ruined halls, Where once the clansmen rested from the raid, Each eve the sun upon your old skull falls, And shrouds your grey corpse with a bloody plaid.

Do wan ghosts linger still within the rooms,

Where Highland ladies dressed their powdered hair ? Or only spiders weave their silver looms,

And gaunt rats scuttle to some crumbling lair ?

WILFRED GAVIN.