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Even then dishonour's peace he spurned,
The sullied olive-branch returned,
Stood for his country's glory fast,
And nailed her colours to the mast.
Heaven, to reward his firmness, gave
A portion in this honoured grave;
And ne'er held marble in its trust
Of two such wondrous men the dust.

With more than mortal powers endowed,
How high they soared 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,
Looked 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
Eer 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,
For ever tombed beneath the stone,

Where, taming thought to human pride!—
The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.
Diop 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,--

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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?"

Kest, 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 unmarked from northern chime,

Ye heard the Border Minstrel's rhyme:

His Gothic harp has o'er you rung;

The bard you deigned to praise, your deathless names has sung.

Stay yet, illusion, stay awhile, My wildered 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:
Like frost-work 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 copse-wood 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 watching it float down the Tweed;

Or idly list the shrilling lay

With which the milk-maid 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-learned taste refined.

But thou, my friend, canst 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

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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 freed full sixty knights; or when,
A sinful man, and unconfessed,
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
Scorned 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 marred the lofty line.

Warmed 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 veiled and half revealed;
And Honour with his spotless shield;
Attention, with fixed eye; and Fear,
That loves the tale she shrinks to hear;
And gentle Courtesy; and Faith,
Unchanged by sufferings, time, or death;

And Valour, 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
Renewed such legendary strain;
For thou hast sung, how He of Gaul,
That, Amadis so famed in hall,
For Oriana, foiled 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.

CANTO FIRST.

THE CASTLE.

1. DAY set on Norham's castled steep,
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep,
And Cheviot's mountains lone:
The battled towers, the donjon keep,
The loop-hole grates where captives weep,
The flanking walls that round it sweep,
In yellow lustre shone.

The warriors on the turrets high,
Moving athwart the evening sky,
Seemed forms of giant height:

Their armour, as it caught the rays,
Flashed back again the western blaze,
In lines of dazzling light.

2. St 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 barred;
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.

3. 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 warned the Captain in the hall,
For well the blast he knew ;
And joyfully that Knight did call,
To sewer, squire, and seneschal.

4. "Now, broach ye a pipe of Malvoisie,
Bring pasties of the doe,

And quickly make the entrance free,
And bid my heralds ready be,
And every minstrel sound his glee,
And all our trumpets blow;

And, from the platform, spare ye not
To fire a noble salvo-shot:

Lord Marmion waits below."--
Then to the Castle's lower ward
Sped forty yeomen tall,
The iron-studded gates unbarred,
Raised the portcullis' ponderous guard,
The lofty palisade unsparred,
And let the drawbridge fall.

5. Along the bridge Lord Marmion rode,
Proudly his red-roan charger trode,
His helm hung at the saddle-bow;
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 revealed
A token true of Bosworth field;
His eyebrow dark, and eye of fire,
Showed 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 moustache, and curly hair,
Coal-black, and grizzled here and there,
But more through toil than age;

His square-turned joints, and strength of limb,
Showed him no carpet knight so trim,
But, in close fight, a champion grim,

In camps, a leader sage.

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