Robert the Bruce (To Douglas in Dying)

'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.

Taken from Collected Poems by Edwin Muir Published by Faber and Faber