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