The Maid of Neidpath
by Sir Walter Scott

Scottish novelist, poet, historian, translator and biographer, best known as the author of the historical novel and author of Ivanhoe (1819). His first published works were translations - The Chase and William and Helen (1796), a translation of two ballads by G.A. Bürger, and a translation of Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen (1799) - and a compendium of border ballads, collected by Scott in three volumes, entitled Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-3). These were followed by a narrative poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and other poetic romances: Marmion (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810), Rokeby (1813) and Lord of the Isles (1813). He also published eighteen and twelve volume works of Dryden and Swift in 1808 and 1814 respectively, before the appearance, in 1814, of the first novel Waverley (1814).

This became the first of a trilogy of novels with the subsequent publication of Guy Mannering (1815) and The Antiquary (1816). Four other series of Scottish historical novels followed - The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality (1816); Rob Roy and The Heart of Midlothian (1818); The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose (1819) - before his taking up of specifically English history in the more famous texts: Ivanhoe (1819), The Monastery and the Abbot (1820), Kenilworth (1821), The Pirate (1822) and The Fortunes of Nigel (1822). Later works include Quentin Durwood (1822), Redgauntlet (1824) and The Talisman (1825).

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The Maid of Neidpath
by Sir Walter Scott

O lovers' eyes are sharp to see,
And lovers' ears in hearing;
And love, in life's extremity,
Can lend an hour of cheering.
Disease had been in Mary's bower,
And slow decay from mourning,
Though now she sits on Neidpath's tower,
To watch her love's returning.

All sunk and dim her eyes so bright,
Her form decay'd by pining,
Till through her wasted hand, at night,
You saw the taper shining;
By fits, a sultry hectic hue
Across her cheek was flying;
By fits, so ashy pale she grew,
Her maidens thought her dying.

Yet keenest powers to see and hear
Seem'd in her frame residing;
Before the watch-dog pricked his ear
She heard her lover's riding;
Ere scarce a distant form was ken'd,
She knew, and waved to greet him;
And o'er the battlement did bend,
As on the wing to meet him.

He came—he pass'd—an heedless gaze,
As o'er some stranger glancing;
Her welcome, spoke in faltering phrase,
Lost in his courser's prancing.
The castle arch, whose hollow tone
Returns each whisper spoken,
Could scarcely catch the feeble moan
Which told her heart was broken.

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The Maid of Neidpath by Sir Walter Scott