Nor blaze yon fires where meets the manly fight;
Beacons of infamy, they light the way,

Where cowardice and cruelty unite,

To damn with double shame their ignominious flight.
6. O triumph for the Fiends of Lust and Wrath!
Ne'er to be told, yet ne'er to be forgot,

What wanton horrors marked their wrackful path!
The peasant butchered in his ruined cot,
The hoary priest even at the altar shot,

Childhood and age given o'er to sword and flame,
Woman to infamy;-no crime forgot,

By which inventive demons might proclaim

Immortal hate to Man, and scorn of God's great name!

7. The rudest sentinel, in Britain born,

With horror paused to view the havoc done,
Gave his poor crust to feed some wretch forlorn,
Wiped his stern eye, then fiercer grasped his gun.
Nor with less zeal shall Britain's peaceful son
Exult the debt of sympathy to pay;

Riches nor poverty the tax shall shun,

Nor prince nor peer, the wealthy nor the gay,

Nor the poor peasant's mite, nor bard's more worthless lay.
8. But thou unfoughten wilt thou yield to Fate,
Minion of Fortuné, now miscalled in vain!
Can vantage-ground no confidence create,
Marcella's pass, nor Guarda's mountain-chain?
Vain-glorious Fugitive! yet turn again!

Behold, where, named by some Prophetic Seer,
Flows Honour's Fountain, as fore-doomed the stain
From thy dishonoured name and arms to clear-
Fallen Child of Fortune, turn, redeem her favour here!

9. Yet, ere thou turn'st, collect each distant aid :

Those chief that never heard the Lion roar!
Within whose souls lives not a trace portrayed

Of Talavera, or Mondego's shore!

Marshal each band thou hast, and summon more;
Of war's fell stratagems exhaust the whole;
Rank upon rank, squadron on squadron pour,
Legion on legion on thy foeman roll,

And weary out his arm-thou canst not quell his soul.

10. O vainly gleams with steel Agueda's shore,

Vainly thy squadrons hide Assuava's plain,
And front the flying thunders as they roar,
With frantic charge, and tenfold odds, in vain!
And what avails thee that, for Cameron slain,
Wild from his plaided ranks the yell was given-
Vengeance and grief gave mountain rage the rein,

And, at the bloody spear-point headlong driven,
The Despot's giant guards fled like the rack of heaven

Waked for his noble house their lyres,
Nor one of all the race was known
But prized its weal above their own.
With the Chief's birth begins our care;
Our heart must soothe the infant heir,
Teach the youth tales of fight, and grace
His earliest feat of field or chase;
In peace, in war, our rank we keep,
We cheer his board, we soothe his sleep,
Nor leave him till we pour our verse,
A doleful tribute! o'er his hearse.
Then let me share his captive lot;
It is my right,-deny it not !"-
"Little we reck," said John of Brent,
"We Southern men, of long descent;
Nor wot we how a name-a word-
Makes clansmen vassals to a lord:
Yet kind my noble landlord's part,-
God bless the house of Beaudesert!
And, but I loved to drive the deer,
More than to guide the labouring steer,
I had not dwelt an outcast here.
Come, good old Minstrel, follow me ;
Thy Lord and Chieftain shalt thou see."-

12. Then, from a rusted iron hook,

A bunch of ponderous keys he took,
Lighted a torch, and Allan led

Through grated arch and passage dread.
Portals they passed, where, deep within,
Spoke prisoner's moan and fetters' din;
Through rugged vaults, where, loosely stored
Lay wheel, and axe, and headsman's sword,
And many an hideous engine grim,
For wrenching joint, and crushing limb,
By artists formed, who deemed it shame
And sin to give their work a name.
They halted at a low-browed porch,
And Brent to Allan gave the torch,

While bolt and chain he backward rolied,
And made the bar unhasp its hold.
They entered:-'twas a prison-room
Of stern security and gloom,

Yet not a dungeon; for the day

Through lofty gratings found its way,

And rude and antique garniture

Decked the sad walls and oaken floor;

Such as the rugged days of old

Deemed fit for captive noble's hold.

66

"Here," said De Brent, thou mayst remain

Till the Leech visit him again.

Strict is his charge, the warders tell,

From clime to clime, where'er war's trumpets sound,
The wanderer went; yet, Caledonia! still
Thine was his thought in march and tented ground.;
He dreamed 'mid Alpine cliffs of Athole's hill,
And heard in Ebro's roar his Lyndoch's lovely rill.
17. O hero of a race renowned of old,

Whose war-cry oft has waked the battle-swell,
Since first distinguished in the onset bold,

Wild sounding when the Roman rampart fell!
By Wallace' side it rung the Southron's knell,
Alderne, Kilsythe, and Tibber owned its fame,
Tummell's rude pass can of its terrors tell,

But ne'er from prouder field arose the name
Than when wild Ronda learned the conquering shout of
GRÆME!

18. But all too long, through seas unknown and dark,
(With Spenser's parable I close my tale,)

By shoal and rock hath steered my venturous bark;
And landward now I drive before the gale:

And now the blue and distant shore I hail,
And nearer now I see the port expand,
And now I gladly furl my weary sail,

And, as the prow light touches on the strand,

I strike my red-cross flag, and bind my skiff to land.

JOHN B. S. MORRITT, ESQ.,

THIS POEM, THE SCENE OF WHICH IS LAID IN HIS BEAUTIFUL DEMESNE OF ROKEBY, IS INSCRIBED, IN TOKEN OF

SINCERE FRIENDSHIP, BY
WALTER SCOTT.

Dec. 31st, 1812.

ADVERTISEMENT TO FIRST EDITION, 1813.

THE Scene of this poem is laid at Rokeby, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire, and shifts to the adjacent fortress of Barnard Castle, and to other places in that vicinity.

The time occupied by the action is a space of Five Days, three of which are supposed to elapse between the end of the Fifth and beginning of the Sixth Canto.

The date of the supposed events is immediately subsequent to the great battle of Marston Moor, 3d July, 1644. This period of public confusion has been chosen, without any purpose of combining the Fable with the Military or Political Events of the Civil War, but only as affording a degree of probability to the Fictitious Narrative now presented to the Public.

CANTO FIRST.

1. THE Moon is in her summer glow,
But hoarse and high the breezes blow,
And, racking o'er her face, the cloud
Varies the tincture of her shroud;
On Barnard's towers, and Tees's stream,
She changes as a guilty dream,

When Conscience, with remorse and fear,
Goads sleeping Fancy's wild career

Her light seemed now the blush of shan.c,
Seemed now fierce anger's darker flame,

Shifting that shade, to come and go,
Like apprehension's hurried glow;
Then sorrow's livery dims the air,
And dies in darkness, like despair.
Such varied hues the warder sees
Reflected from the woodland Tees,
Then from old Baliol's tower looks forth,
Sees the clouds mustering in the north,
Hears, upon turret-roof and wall,
By fits the plashing rain-drop fall,
Lists to the breeze's boding sound,
And wraps his shaggy mantle round.

2. Those towers, which in the changeful gleam
Throw murky shadows on the stream,
Those towers of Barnard hold a guest,
The emotions of whose troubled breast
In wild and strange confusion driven,
Rival the flitting rack of heaven.
Ere sleep stern OSWALD'S senses tied,
Oft had he changed his weary side,
Composed his limbs and vainly sought
By effort strong to banish thought.
Sleep came at length, but with a train
Of feelings true and fancies vain,
Mingling, in wild disorder cast,
The expected future with the past.
Conscience, anticipating time,
Already rues the enacted crime,
And calls her furies forth, to shake

The sounding scourge and hissing snake;

While her poor victim's outward throes
Bear witness to his mental woes,
And show what lesson may be read
Beside a sinner's restless bed.

3. Thus Oswald's labouring feelings trace
Strange changes in his sleeping face,
Rapid and ominous as these

With which the moonbeams tinge the Tees.
There might be seen of shame the blush,
There anger's dark and fiercer flush,
While the perturbed sleeper's hand
Seemed grasping dagger-knife, or brand.
Relaxed that grasp, the heavy sigh,
The tear in the half-opening eye,
The pallid cheek and brow, confessed
That grief was busy in his breast;
Nor paused that mood-a sudden start
Impelled the life-blood from the heart:
Features convulsed, and mutterings drev
Show terror reigns in sorrow's stead.