text:  Proud palace-home of kings! what art thou now? Worn are the traceries of thy lofty brow! Yet once in beauteous strength like thee were none When Rothesay's Duke was heir to Scotland's throne;[7] Ere Falkland rose or Holyrood in thee The barons to their sovereign bow'd the knee: Now as to mock thy pride The very waters of thy moat are dried; Through fractured arch and doorway freely pass The sunbeams into halls o'ergrown with grass; Thy floors unroof'd are open to the sky And the snows lodge there when the storm sweeps by; O'er thy grim battlements where bent the bow Thine archers keen now hops the chattering crow; And where the beauteous and the brave were guests Now breed the bats--the swallows build their nests! Lost even the legend of the bloody stair Whose steps wend downward to the house of prayer; Gone is the priest and they who worshipp'd seem Phantoms to us--a dream within a dream; Earth hath o'ermantled each memorial stone And from their tombs the very dust is gone; All perish'd all forgotten like the ray Which gilt yon orient hill-tops yesterday; All nameless save mayhap one stalwart knight Who fell with Graeme in Falkirk's bloody fight-- Bonkill's stout Stewart [8] whose heroic tale Oft circles yet the peasant's evening fire And how he scorn'd to fly and how he bled-- He whose effigies in St Mary's choir With planted heel upon the lion's head Now rests in marble mail