Our old songs are lost,
Our sons are newspapermen
At the singers’ cost.
There were no papers when
Sir Patrick Spens put out to sea
In all the country cottages
With music and ceremony
For five centuries.
Till Scott and Hogg, the robbers, came
And nailed the singing tragedies down
In dumb letters under a name
And led the bothy to the town.
Sir Patrick Spens shut in a book,
Burd Helen stretched across a page:
A few readers look
There at the effigy of our age.
The singing and the harping fled
Into the silent library;
But we are with Helen dead
And with Sir Patrick lost at sea.