E'er framed in dark Thessalian cave,
Though his could drain the ocean dry,
And force the planets from the sky.'
These spells are spent, and, spent with these,
The wine of life is on the lees.
Genius, and taste, and talent gone,
Forever tomb'd beneath the stone,
Where-taming thought to human pride!—
The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.'
Drop upon Fox's grave the tear,
"Twill trickle to his rival's bier;
O'er PITT's the mournful requiem sound,
And Fox's shall the notes rebound.
The solemn echo seems to cry,-
"Here let their discord with them die.
Speak not for those a separate doom,
Whom Fate made Brothers in the tomb;
But search the land of living men,
Where wilt thou find their like agen?"
Rest, ardent Spirits! till the cries
Of dying Nature bid you rise;
Not even your Britain's groans can pierce
The leaden silence of your hearse;
Then, O, how impotent and vain
This grateful tributary strain!
Though not unmark'd from northern clime,
Ye heard the Border Minstrel's rhyme:
His Gothic harp has o'er you rung;
The Bard you deign'd to praise, your deathless names has sung.
Stay yet, illusion, stay a while,
My wilder'd fancy still beguile !
From this high theme how can I part,
Ere half unloaded is my heart!
For all the tears e'er sorrow drew,
And all the raptures fancy knew,
And all the keener rush of blood,
That throbs through bard in bard-like mood,
Were here a tribute mean and low,
Though all their mingled streams could flow-
Woe, wonder, and sensation high,
In one spring-tide of ecstasy!—
It will not be-it may not last-
The vision of enchantment's past:
1 MS.-"And force the pale moon from the sky."
"Reader! remember when thou wert a lad,
Then Pitt was all; or, if not all, so much,
His very rival almost deem'd him such.
We, we have seen the intellectual race
Of giants stand, like Titans, face to face;
Athos and Ida, with a dashing sea
Of eloquence between, which flow'd all free,
As the deep billows of the Egean roar
Betwixt the Hellenic and the Phrygian shore.
But where are they-the rivals!-a few feet
Of sullen earth divide each winding-sheet.
How peaceful and how powerful is the grave
Like frostwork in the morning ray,
The fancied fabric melts away;
Each Gothic arch, memorial-stone,
And long, dim, lofty aisle, are gone;
And, lingering last, deception dear,
The choir's high sounds die on my ear.
Now slow return the lonely down,
The silent pastures bleak and brown,
The farm begirt with copsewood wild,
The gambols of each frolic child,
Mixing their shrill cries with the tone
Of Tweed's dark waters rushing on.
Prompt on unequal tasks to run,
Thus Nature disciplines her son:
Meeter, she says, for me to stray,
And waste the solitary day,
In plucking from yon fen the reed,
And watch it floating down the Tweed;
Or idly list the shrilling lay,
With which the milkmaid cheers her way,
Marking its cadence rise and fail,
As from the field, beneath her pail,
She trips it down the uneven dale;
Meeter for me, by yonder cairn,
The ancient shepherd's tale to learn;
Though oft he stop in rustic fear,
Lest his old legends tire the ear
Of one, who, in his simple mind,
May boast of book-learn'd taste refined.
But thou, my friend, can'st fitly tell (For few have read romance so well), How still the legendary lay
O'er poet's bosom holds its sway;
How on the ancient minstrel strain
Time lays his palsied hand in vain;
And how our hearts at doughty deeds,
By warriors wrought in steely weeds,
Still throb for fear and pity's sake;
As when the Champion of the Lake
Enters Morgana's fated house,
Or in the Chapel Perilous,
Despising spells and demons' force,
Holds converse with the unburied corse;"
Or when, Dame Ganore's grace to move,
Which hushes all! a calm unstormy wave
Which oversweeps the world. The theme is old
Of dust to dust;' but half its tale untold;
Time tempers not its terrors."-
BYRON's Age of Bronze.
3"If but a beam of sober reason play,
Lo! Fancy's fairy frostwork melts away."
ROGERS' Pleasures of Memory.
4 MS." Though oft he stops to wonder still
That his old legends have the skill
To win so well the attentive ear,
Perchance to draw the sigh or tear.
(Alas, that lawless was their love!)
He sought proud Tarquin in his den,
And free full sixty knights; or when,
A sinful man, and unconfess'd,
He took the Sangreal's holy quest,
And, slumbering, saw the vision high,
He might not view with waking eye.'
The mightiest chiefs of British song
Scorn'd not such legends to prolong:
They gleam through Spenser's elfin dream,
And mix in Milton's heavenly theme;
And Dryden, in immortal strain,
Had raised the Table Round again,'
But that a ribald King and Court
Bade him toil on, to make them sport;
Demanded for their niggard pay,
Fit for their souls, a looser lay,
Licentious satire, song, and play;"
The world defrauded of the high design,
Profaned the God-given strength, and marr'd
the lofty line.
Warm'd by such names, well may we then, Though dwindled sons of little men, Essay to break a feeble lance
In the fair fields of old romance;
Or seck the moated castle's cell,
Where long through talisman and spell,
While tyrants ruled, and damsels wept,
Thy Genius, Chivalry, hath slept:
There sound the harpings of the North,
Till he awake and sally forth,
On venturous quest to prick again,
In all his arms, with all his train,"
Shield, lance, and brand, and plume, and scarf,
Fay, giant, dragon, squire, and dwarf,
And wizard with his wand of might,
And errant maid on palfrey white.
Around the Genius weave their spells,
Pure Love, who scarce his passión tells;
Mystery, half veil'd and half reveal'd;
And Honor, with his spotless shield;
Attention, with fix'd eye; and Fear,
That loves the tale she shrinks to hear;
And gentle Courtesy; and Faith,
Unchanged by sufferings, time, or death;
And Valor, lion-mettled lord,
Leaning upon his own good sword.
Well has thy fair achievement shown, A worthy meed may thus be won; Ytene's oaks-beneath whose shade Their theme the merry minstrels made, Of Ascapart and Bevis bold,"
And that Red King, who, while of old,
Through Boldrewood the chase he led,
By his loved huntsman's arrow bled-
Ytene's oaks have heard again
Renew'd such legendary strain;
For thou hast sung, how He of Gaul,
That Amadis so famed in hall,
For Oriana, foil'd in fight
The Necromancer's felon might;
And well in modern verse hast wove
Partenopex's mystic love :"
Hear, then, attentive to my lay,
A knightly tale of Albion's elder day.
A distant trampling sound he hears;
He looks abroad, and soon appears,
O'er Horncliff-hill a plump of spears,
Beneath a pennon gay;
A horseman, darting from the crowd,
Like lightning from a summer cloud,
Spurs on his mettled courser proud,
Before the dark array.
Beneath the sable palisade,
That closed the Castle barricade,
His bugle horn he blew;
The warder hasted from the wall,
And warn'd the Captain in the hall,
For well the blast he knew;
And joyfully that knight did call,
To sewer, squire, and seneschal.
Raised the portcullis' ponderous guard,
The lofty palisade unsparr'd
And let the drawbridge fall.
Along the bridge Lord Marmion rode,
Proudly his red-roan charger trode,
His helm hung at the saddlebow;
Well by his visage you might know
He was a stalworth knight, and keen,
And had in many a battle been;
The scar on his brown cheek reveal'd'
A token true of Bosworth field;
His eyebrow dark, and eye of fire,
Show'd spirit proud, and prompt to ire;
Yet lines of thought upon his cheek
Did deep design and counsel speak.
His forehead, by his casque worn bare,
His thick mustache, and curly hair,
Coal-black, and grizzled here and there,
But more through toil than age;
His square-turned joints, and strength of limb
Show'd him no carpet knight so trim,
But in close fight a champion grim,
In camps a leader sage.
Well was he arm'd from head to heel,
In mail and plate of Milan steel;"
But his strong helm, of mighty cost,
Was all with burnish'd gold emboss'd:
Amid the plumage of the crest,
A falcon hover'd on her nest,
With wings outspread, and forward breast;
E'en such a falcon, on his shield,
Spar'd sable in an azure field:
The golden legend bore aright,
Who checks at me, to death is dight."
Blue was the charger's broider'd rein;
Blue ribbons deck'd his arching mane;
The knightly housing's ample fold
Was velvet blue, and trapp'd with gold.
Behind him rode two gallant squires,
Of noble name, and knightly sires;
They burn'd the gilded spurs to claim;
For well could each a war-horse tame,
Could draw the bow, the sword could sway,
"Marmion is to Deloraine what Tom Jones is to Joseph Andrews the varnish of higher breeding nowhere diminishes the prominence of the features; and the minion of a king is as light and sinewy a cavalier as the Borderer-rather less ferocious-more wicked, not less fit for the hero of a ballad, and much more so for the hero of a regular poem.' "-GEORGE ELLIS.
See Appendix, Note G.
7 Ibid. Note H.
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