And far beneath their summer hill,
Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rill:
The shepherd shifts his mantle's fold,
And wraps him closer from the cold;
His dogs, no merry circles wheel,
But, shivering, follow at his heel;
A cowering glance they often cast,
As deeper moans the gathering blast.

My imps, though hardy, bold, and wild, As best befits the mountain child, Feel the sad influence of the hour, And wail the daisy's vanished flower; Their summer gambols tell, and mourn, And anxious ask,-Will spring return, And birds and lambs again be gay, And blossoms clothe the hawthorn spray?

Yes, prattlers, yes. The daisy's flower Again shall paint your summer bower; Again the hawthorn shall supply The garlands you delight to tie; The lambs upon the lea shall bound, The wild birds carol to the round, And while you frolic light as they, Too short shall seem the summer day.

To mute and to material things New life revolving summer brings;' The genial call dead Nature hears, And in her glory reappears. But oh my country's wintry state What second spring shall renovate? What powerful call shall bid arise The buried warlike and the wise; The mind that thought for Britain's weal, The hand that grasp'd the victor's steel? The vernal sun new life bestows Even on the meanest flower that blows; But vainly, vainly may he shine, Where glory weeps o'er NELSON's shrine;

1 "The chance and change' of nature,-the vicissitudes which are observable in the moral as well as the physical part of the creation,-have given occasion to more exquisite poetry than any other general subject. The author had before made ample use of the sentiments suggested by these topics; yet he is not satisfied, but begins again with the same in his first introduction. The lines are certainly pleasing; but they fall, in our estimation, far below that beautiful simile of the Tweed which he has introduced into his former poem. The At, at, Tai padakaι of Moschns is, however, worked up again to some advantage in the following passage;- To mute,' &c."Monthly Rev., May, 1808.

2 MS." What call awakens from the dead
The hero's heart, the patriot's head ?”
SMS.-" Deep in each British bosom wrote,
O never be those names forgot!"

4 Nelson.

A Copenhagen.

MS." Tagg'd at subjection's cracking rein."

And vainly pierce the solemn gloom,
That shrouds, O PITT, thy hallow'd tomb!
Deep graved in every British heart,
O never let those names depart !3
Say to your sons,--Lo, here his grave,
Who victor died on Gadite wave;
To him, as to the burning levin,
Short, bright, resistless course was given.
Where'er his country's foes were found,
Was heard the fated thunder's sound,
Till burst the bolt on yonder shore,
Roll'd, blazed, destroy'd,—and was no more.

Nor mourn ye less his perish'd worth, Who bade the conqueror go forth, And launch'd that thunderbolt of war On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar; Who, born to guide such high emprize, For Britain's weal was early wise; Alas! to whom the Almighty gave, For Britain's sins, an early grave! His worth, who, in his mightiest hour, A bauble held the pride of power, Spurn'd at the sordid lust of pelf, And served his Albion for herself; Who, when the frantic crowd amain Strain'd at subjection's bursting rein," O'er their wild mood full conquest gain'd, The pride, he would not crush, restrain'd, Show'd their fierce zeal a worthier cause," And brought the freeman's arm, to aid the freeman's laws.

Thy strength had propp'd the tottering throne:

Now is the stately column broke,
The beacon-light is quench'd in smoke,

The trumpet's silver sound is still,
The warder silent on the hill!

Oh think, how to his latest day,'

When Death, just hovering, claim'd his prey,
With Palinure's unalter'd mood,
Firm at his dangerous post he stood;
Each call for needful rest repell'd,
With dying hand the rudder held,
Till in his fall, with fateful sway,
The steerage of the realm gave way!
Then while on Britain's thousand plains,
One unpolluted church remains,
Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around
The bloody tocsin's maddening sound,
But still, upon the hallow'd day,'
Convoke the swains to praise and pray;
While faith and civil peace are dear,
Grace this cold marble with a tear,-
He, who preserved them, PITT, lies here!

Nor yet suppress the generous sigh, Because his rival slumbers nigh; Nor be thy requiescat dumb, Lest it be said o'er Fox's tomb.3 For talents mourn, untimely lost, When best employ'd, and wanted most; Mourn genius high, and lore profound, And wit that loved to play, not wound; And all the reasoning powers divine, To penetrate, resolve, combine; And feelings keen, and fancy's glow,They sleep with him who sleeps below: And, if thou mourn'st they could not save From error him who owns this grave,

"While Scott was correcting a second proof of the passage where Pitt and Fox are mentioned together, at Stanmore Priory, in April, 1807, Lord Abercorn suggested that the compliment to the Whig statesman ought to be still further heightened, and several lines-

For talents mourn untimely lost,

When best employed, and wanted most,' &c.were added accordingly. I have heard, indeed, that they came from the Marquis's own pen. Ballantyne, however, from some inadvertence, had put the sheet to press before the revise, as it is called, arrived in Edinburgh, and some few copies got abroad in which the additional couplets were omitted. A London

Be every harsher thought suppress'd,
And sacred be the last long rest.
Here, where the end of earthly things
Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings;
Where stiff the hand, and still the tongue,
Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung;
Here, where the fretted aisles prolong
The distant notes of holy song,

As if some angel spoke agen,

"All peace on earth, good-will to men;" If ever from an English heart,

O, here let prejudice depart,

And, partial feeling cast aside,
Record, that Fox a Briton died!
When Europe crouch'd to France's yoke,
And Austria bent, and Prussia broke,
And the firm Russian's purpose brave,
Was barter'd by a timorous slave,
Even then dishonor's peace he spurn'd,
The sullied olive-branch return'd,
Stood for his country's glory fast,
And nail'd her colors to the mast!
Heaven, to reward his firmness, gave
A portion in this honor'd grave,
And ne'er held marble in its trust
Of two such wondrous men the dust."

With more than mortal powers endow'd, How high they soar'd above the crowd! Theirs was no common party race, Jostling by dark intrigue for place; Like fabled Gods, their mighty war Shook realms and nations in its jar; Beneath each banner proud to stand, Look'd up the noblest of the land, Till through the British world were known The names of PITT and Fox alone.

Spells of such force no wizard grave

journal (the Morning Chronicle) was stupid and malignant enough to insinuate that the author had his presentation copies struck off with or without them, according as they were for Whig or Tory hands. I mention the circumstance now only because I see by a letter of Heber's that Scott had thought it worth his while to contradict the absurd charge in the newspapers of the day."-LOCKHART, Life of Scott, vol. iii. p. 61. 4 MS." And party passion doff'd aside."

5 "The first epistolary effusion, containing a threnody on Nelson, Pitt, and Fox, exhibits a remarkable failure. We are unwilling to quarrel with a poet on the score of politics; but the manner in which he has chosen to praise the last of these great men, is more likely, we conceive, to give offence to his admirers, than the most direct censure. The only deed for. which he is praised is for having broken off the negotiation for peace; and for this act of firmness, it is added, Heaven rewarded him with a share in the honored grave of Pitt! It is then said that his errors should be forgotten, and that he died a Briton-a pretty plain insinuation that, in the author's opinion, he did not live one; and just such an encomium as he himself pronounces over the grave of his villain hero, Marmion."-JEFFREY.

• MS.-"Theirs was no common courtier race."

E'er framed in dark Thessalian cave,

Though his could drain the ocean dry,
And force the planets from the sky.1
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." 2Reader! 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 Ægean 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,

(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.1

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 seek 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 passion 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:9

Hear, then, attentive to my lay,
A knightly tale of Albion's elder day.

Flash'd back again the western blaze,1 In lines of dazzling light.

II.

Saint George's banner, broad and gay, Now faded, as the fading ray

Less bright, and less, was flung; The evening gale had scarce the power To wave it on the Donjon Tower, So heavily it hung.

The scouts had parted on their search

The Castle gates were barr'd; Above the gloomy portal arch, Timing his footsteps to a march,

The Warder kept his guard; Low humming, as he paced along, Some ancient Border gathering song.

III.

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.

V.

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."

VI.

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,
Soar'd sable in an azure field:

The golden legend bore aright,

Tho 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.

VII.

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.

6 See Appendix, Note G.

7 Ibid. Note H.