Nor do I speak your prayers to gain;
For if a death of lingering pain,
To cleanse my sins, be penance vain,
Vain are your masses too.-

I listen'd to a traitor's tale,

I left the convent and the veil ;

For three long years I bow'd my pride,
A horse-boy in his train to ride;
And well my folly's meed he gave,
Who forfeited, to be his slave,
All here, and all beyond the grave.-
He saw young Clara's face more fair,
He knew her of broad lands the heir,
Forgot his vows, his faith foreswore,
And Constance was beloved no more.-
"Tis an old tale, and often told;

But did my fate and wish agree,
Ne'er had been read, in story old,
Of maiden true betray'd for gold,
That loved, or was avenged, like me!

XXVIII.

"The King approved his favourite's aim; In vain a rival barr'd his claim,

Whose fate with Clare's was plight, For he attaints that rival's fame

With treason's charge-and on they came, In mortal lists to fight.

Their oaths are said,

Their prayers are pray'd,

Their lances in the rest are laid, They meet in mortal shock;

And, hark! the throng, with thundering cry,
Shout Marmion, Marmion! to the sky,
De Wilton to the block!'

Say ye, who preach Heaven shall decide1
When in the lists two champions ride,
Say, was Heaven's justice here?
When, loyal in his love and faith,
Wilton found overthrow or death,

Beneath a traitor's spear?

How false the charge, how true he fell,
This guilty packet best can tell.”—
Then drew a packet from her breast,
Paused, gather'd voice, and spoke the rest.

XXIX.

"Still was false Marmion's bridal staid; To Whitby's convent fled the maid,

The hated match to shun.

'Ho! shifts she thus?' King Henry cried, 'Sir Marmion, she shall be thy bride, If she were sworn a nun.'

And faithless hath he proved; He saw another's face more fair,

He saw her of broad lands the heir,

And Constance loved no more

Loved her no more, who, once Heaven's bride,

Now a scorn'd menial by his side,

Had wander'd Europe o'er."

Appall'd the astonish'd conclave sate;

Marmion.

With stupid eyes, the men of fate
Gazed on the light inspired form,
And listen'd for the avenging storm;
The judges felt the victim's dread;

No hand was moved, no word was said,
Till thus the Abbot's doom was given,
Raising his sightless balls to heaven:-
"Sister, let thy sorrows cease;
Sinful brother, part in peace!"

From that dire dungeon, place of doom,
Of execution too, and tomb,

Paced forth the judges three;
Sorrow it were, and shame, to tell
The butcher-work that there befell,
When they had glided from the cell
Of sin and misery.

XXXIII.

An hundred winding steps convey
That conclave to the upper day;2
But, ere they breathed the fresher air,
They heard the shriekings of despair,

And many a stifled groan:

With speed their upward way they take,
(Such speed as age and fear can make,)
And cross'd themselves for terror's sake,
As hurrying, tottering on:
Even in the vesper's heavenly tone,3
They seem'd to hear a dying groan,
And bade the passing knell to toll
For welfare of a parting soul.

Slow o'er the midnight wave it swung,
Northumbrian rocks in answer rung;
To Warkworth cell the echoes roll'd,
His beads the wakeful hermit told,
The Bamborough peasant raised his head,
But slept ere half a prayer he said;
So far was heard the mighty knell,
The stag sprung up on Cheviot Fell,
Spread his broad nostril to the wind,
Listed before, aside, behind,

Then couch'd him down beside the hind,
And quaked among the mountain fern,
To hear that sound so dull and stern.1

INTRODUCTION TO CANTO THIRD.

TO

WILLIAM ERSKINE, Esq.5

Ashestiel, Ettrick Forest.
LIKE April morning clouds, that pass,
With varying shadow, o'er the grass,
And imitate, on field and furrow,
Life's chequer'd scene of joy and sorrow;
Like streamlet of the mountain north,
Now in a torrent racing forth,
Now winding slow its silver train,
And almost slumbering on the plain;
Like breezes of the autumn day,
Whose voice inconstant dies away,
And ever swells again as fast,
When the ear deems its murmur past;
Thus various, my romantic theme
Flits, winds, or sinks, a morning dream.
Yet pleased, our eye pursues the trace
Of Light and Shade's inconstant race;
Pleased, views the rivulet afar,
Weaving its maze irregular;
And pleased, we listen as the breeze

Heaves its wild sigh through Autumn trees;
Then, wild as cloud, or stream, or gale,
Flow on, flow unconfined, my Tale!

Need I to thee, dear Erskine, tell

I love the license all too well,
In sounds now lowly, and now strong,
To raise the desultory song?__
Oft, when 'mid such capricious chime,
Some transient fit of lofty rhyme

To thy kind judgment seem'd excuse
For many an error of the muse,
Oft hast thou said, "If, still mis-spent,
Thine hours to poetry are lent,

Go, and to tame thy wandering course,
Quaff from the fountain at the source;
Approach those masters, o'er whose tomb
Immortal laurels ever bloom:
Instructive of the feebler bard,

Still from the grave their voice is heard; From them, and from the paths they show'd, Choose honour'd guide and practised road; Nor ramble on through brake and maze, With harpers rude of barbarous days.

"Or deem'st thou not our later time' Yields topic meet for classic rhyme? Hast thou no elegiac verse

For Brunswick's venerable hearse?
What! not a line, a tear, a sigh,
When valour bleeds for liberty?—
Oh, hero of that glorious time,
When, with unrivall'd light sublime,-
Though martial Austria, and though all
The might of Russia, and the Gaul,
Though banded Europe stood her foes-
The star of Brandenburgh arose!
Thou couldst not live to see her beam
For ever quench'd in Jena's stream.
Lamented Chief!—it was not given
To thee to change the doom of Heaven,
And crush that dragon in its birth,
Predestined scourge of guilty earth.
Lamented Chief!-not thine the power,
To save in that presumptuous hour,
When Prussia hurried to the field,

And snatch'd the spear, but left the shield!
Valour and skill 'twas thine to try,
And, tried in vain, 'twas thine to die.
Ill had it seem'd thy silver hair
The last, the bitterest pang to share,
For princedoms reft, and scutcheons riven,
And birthrights to usurpers given;
Thy land's, thy children's wrongs to feel,
And witness woes thou couldst not heal!

1 MS.-"Dost thou not deem our later day
Yields topic meet for classic lay?
Hast thou no elegiac tone
To join that universal moan,
Which mingled with the battle's yell,
Where venerable Brunswick fell?-
What! not a verse, a tear, a sigh,
When valour bleeds for liberty?"
MS-"For honour'd life an honour'd close-
The boon which falling heroes crave,
A soldier's death, a warrior's grave.
Or if, with more exulting swell,
Of conquering chiefs thou lov'st to tell,
Give to the harp an unheard strain,
And sing the triumphs of the main-
Of him the Red-Cross hero teach,
Dauntless on Acre's bloody breach,
And, scorner of tyrannic power,
As dauntless in the Temple's tower:
Alike to him the sea, the shore,
The brand, the bridle, or the oar,

On thee relenting Heaven bestows
For honour'd life an honour'd close ;*
And when revolves, in time's sure change,
The hour of Germany's revenge,
When, breathing fury for her sake,
Some new Arminius shall awake,

Her champion, ere he strike, shall come
To whet his sword on BRUNSWICK'S tomb.3

"Or of the Red-Cross hero teach, Dauntless in dungeon as on breach: Alike to him the sea, the shore, The brand, the bridle, or the oar: Alike to him the war that calls Its votaries to the shatter'd walls, Which the grim Turk, besmear'd with blood, Against the Invincible made good;

Or that, whose thundering voice could wake
The silence of the polar lake,

When stubborn Russ, and metal'd Swede,
On the warp'd wave their death-game

play'd;

Or that, where Vengeance and Affright
Howl'd round the father of the fight,
Who snatch'd, on Alexandria's sand,
The conqueror's wreath with dying hand."

"Or, if to touch such chord be thine,
Restore the ancient tragic line,
And emulate the notes that wrung
From the wild harp, which silent hung
By silver Avon's holy shore,

Till twice an hundred years roll'd o'er;
When she, the bold Enchantress, came,
With fearless hand and heart on flame!
From the pale willow snatch'd the treasure,
And swept it with a kindred measure,
Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove
With Montfort's hate and Basil's love,
Awakening at the inspired strain,
Deem'd their own Shakspeare lived again."

The general's eye, the pilot's art,
The soldier's arm, the sailor's heart.
Or if to touch such chord be thine," &c.

a "Scott seems to have communicated fragments of the poem very freely during the whole of its progress. As early as the 22d February 1807, I find Mrs. Hayman acknowledging, in the name of the Princess of Wales, the receipt of a copy of the Introduction to Canto III., in which occurs the tribute to her royal highness's heroic father, mortally wounded the year before at Jena-a tribute so grateful to her feelings that she herself shortly after sent the poet an elegant silver vase as a memorial of her thankfulness. And about the same time the Marchioness of Abercorn expresses the delight with which both she and her lord had read the generous verses on Pitt and Fox in another of those epistles."-Life of Scott, vol iii. p. 9.

• Sir Sidney Smith.

5 Sir Ralph Abercromby.

6 Joanna Baillie.

Thy friendship thus thy judgment wronging, With praises not to me belonging,

In task more meet for mightiest powers, Wouldst thou engage my thriftless hours. But say, my Erskine, hast thou weigh'd That secret power by all obey'd, Which warps not less the passive mind, Its source conceal'd or undefined; Whether an impulse, that has birth Soon as the infant wakes on earth, One with our feelings and our powers, And rather part of us than ours; Or whether fitlier term'd the sway Of habit, form'd in early day? Howe'er derived, its force confest Rules with despotic sway the breast, And drags us on by viewless chain, While taste and reason plead in vain.' Look east, and ask the Belgian why, Beneath Batavia's sultry sky, He seeks not eager to inhale The freshness of the mountain gale, Content to rear his whiten'd wall Beside the dank and dull canal ? He'll say, from youth he loved to see The white sail gliding by the tree. Or see yon weatherbeaten hind, Whose sluggish herds before him wind, Whose tatter'd plaid and rugged cheek His northern clime and kindred speak; Through England's laughing meads he goes, And England's wealth around him flows; Ask, if it would content him well, At ease in those gay plains to dwell, Where hedge-rows spread a verdant screen, And spires and forests intervene, And the neat cottage peeps between ? No! not for these will he exchange His dark Lochaber's boundless range: Not for fair Devon's meads forsake Bennevis grey, and Garry's lake.

Thus while I ape the measure wild
Of tales that charm'd me yet a child,
Rude though they be, still with the chime
Return the thoughts of early time;
And feelings, roused in life's first day,
Glow in the line, and prompt the lay.

1 "As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath,
Receives the lurking principle of death;
The young disease, that must subdue at length,
Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength:
So, cast and mingled with his very frame,

The Mind's disease, its RULING PASSION Came;
Each vital humour which should feed the whole,

Soon flows to this, in body and in soul;
Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head,
As the mind opens, and its functions spread,
Imagination plies her dangerous art,
And pours it all upon the peccant part.

"Nature its mother, Habit is its nurse; Wit, Spirit, Faculties, but make it worse;

Then rise those crags, that mountain tower,
Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour.
Though no broad river swept along,
To claim, perchance, heroic song;
Though sigh'd no groves in summer gale,
To prompt of love a softer tale;
Though scarce a puny streamlet's speed
Claim'd homage from a shepherd's reed;
Yet was poetic impulse given,

By the green hill and clear blue heaven.
It was a barren scene, and wild,
Where naked cliffs were rudely piled;
But ever and anon between

Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;
And well the lonely infant knew
Recesses where the wall-flower grew,
And honey-suckle loved to crawl
Up the low crag and ruin'd wall.

I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade

The sun in all its round survey'd;
And still I thought that shatter'd tower
The mightiest work of human power;
And marvell'd as the aged hind

With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind,

Of forayers, who, with headlong force,

Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse,
Their southern rapine to renew,

Far in the distant Cheviots blue,
And, home returning, fill'd the hall
With revel, wassel-rout, and brawl.5
Methought that still with trump and clang,
The gateway's broken arches rang;
Methought grim features, seam'd with scars,
Glared through the window's rusty bars,
And ever, by the winter hearth,
Old tales I heard of woe or mirth,
Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms,

Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms;
Of patriot battles, won of old

By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold;

Of later fields of feud and fight,

When, pouring from their Highland height,
The Scottish clans, in headlong sway,

Had swept the scarlet ranks away.
While stretch'd at length upon the floor,
Again I fought each combat o'er,
Pebbles and shells, in order laid,
The mimic ranks of war display'd;

Reason itself but gives it edge and power;

As Heaven's blest beam turns vinegar more sour," &e.
POPE'S Essay on Man.-ED.

MS." The lonely hill, the rocky tower,

That caught attention's wakening hour."

3 MS." Recesses where the woodbine grew.”

4 Smailholm Tower, in Berwickshire, the scene of the Author's infancy, is situated about two miles from Dryburgh Abbey.

The two next couplets are not in the MS.

MS." While still with mimic hosts of shells,

Again my sport the combat tells

Onward the Scottish Lion bore,

The scatter'd Southron fled before."

And onward still the Scottish Lion bore, And still the scatter'd Southron fled before.'

Still, with vain fondness, could I trace,
Anew, each kind familiar face,
That brighten'd at our evening fire!
From the thatch'd mansion's grey-hair'd Sire,"
Wise without learning, plain and good,
And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood;
Whose eye, in age, quick, clear, and keen,
Show'd what in youth its glance had been;
Whose doom discording neighbours sought,
Content with equity unbought;3

To him the venerable Priest,
Our frequent and familiar guest,
Whose life and manners well could paint
Alike the student and the saint ;^
Alas! whose speech too oft I broke
With gambol rude and timeless joke:
For I was wayward, bold, and wild,
A self-will'd imp, a grandame's child;
But half a plague, and half a jest,
Was still endured, beloved, caress'd.

For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask The classic poet's well-conn'd task? Nay, Erskine, nay-On the wild hill Let the wild heath-bell flourish still; Cherish the tulip, prune the vine, But freely let the woodbine twine, And leave, untrimm'd the eglantine: Nay, my friend, nay-Since oft thy praise Hath given fresh vigour to my lays; Since oft thy judgment could refine My flatten'd thought, or cumbrous line; Still kind, as is thy wont, attend, And in the minstrel spare the friend. Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale, Flow forth, flow unrestrain'd, my Tale!

By glen and streamlet winded still,
Where stunted birches hid the rill.
They might not choose the lowland road,
For the Merse forayers were abroad,
Who, fired with hate and thirst of prey,
Had scarcely fail'd to bar their way.
Oft on the trampling band, from crown
Of some tall cliff, the deer look'd down;
On wing of jet, from his repose
In the deep heath, the black-cock rose;
Sprung from the gorse the timid roe,
Nor waited for the bending bow;
And when the stony path began,
By which the naked peak they wan,
Up flew the snowy ptarmigan.
The noon had long been pass'd before
They gain'd the height of Lammermoor;"
Thence winding down the northern way,
Before them, at the close of day,
Old Gifford's towers and hamlet lay.7

II.

No summons calls them to the tower,
To spend the hospitable hour.

To Scotland's camp the Lord was gone;
His cautious dame, in bower alone,
Dreaded her castle to unclose,

So late, to unknown friends or foes.

On through the hamlet as they paced,
Before a porch, whose front was graced
With bush and flagon trimly placed,

Lord Marmion drew his rein:
The village inn seem'd large, though rude;
Its cheerful fire and hearty food

Might well relieve his train. Down from their seats the horsemen sprung, With jingling spurs the court-yard rung; They bind their horses to the stall, For forage, food, and firing call, And various clamour fills the hall: Weighing the labour with the cost, Toils everywhere the bustling host.

III.

Soon, by the chimney's merry blaze,
Through the rude hostel might you gaze;
Might see, where, in dark nook aloof,
The rafters of the sooty roof

Bore wealth of winter cheer;

minister of Mertoun, in which parish Smailholm Tower is situated.

MS." They might not choose the easier road.

For many a forayer was abroad."

6 See Notes to "The Bride of Lammermoor." Waverley Novels, vols. xiii, and xiv.

7 The village of Gifford lies about four miles from Haddington: close to it is Yester House, the seat of the Marquis of Tweeddale, and a little farther up the stream, which descends

from the hills of Lammermoor, are the remains of the old castle of the family.

8 See Appendix, Note 2 N.