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  • Remembrance Day
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Remembrance Day

Marion Angus

Some one was singing
Up a twisty stair,
A fragment of a song,
One sweet, spring day,
When twelve o’clock was ringing,
Through the sunny square –

‘There was a lad baith frank and free,
Cam’ doon the bonnie banks o’ Dee
Wi’ tartan plaid and buckled shoon,
An’ he’ll come nae mair to oor toon.’ –


‘He dwells within a far countree,
Where great ones do him courtesie,
They’ve gien him a golden croon,
An’ he’ll come nae mair to oor toon.’
–

No one is singing
Up the twisty stair.
Quiet as a sacrament
The November day.

Can’t you hear it swinging,
The little ghostly air?-
Hear it sadly stray
Through the misty square,
In and out a doorway,
Up a twisty stair –
Tartan plaid and buckled shoon,
He’ll come nae mair to oor toon.


Marion Angus

from The Lilt and Other Verses (1922)

Reproduced by permission of the Estate of Marion Angus

Tags:

loss remembrance songs World War I
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Marion Angus1865 - 1946

Coming late in her life to poetry, Marion Angus wrote during the 1920s, frequently in her native Scots, poems  suggesting social and emotional rejection, and on the ballad-themes of lost love and unquiet spirits.
More about Marion Angus

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