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 re-appears.
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 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;
And vainly pierce the solemn gloom
That shrouds, O PITT, thy hallow'd tomb!

Nor mourn ye less his perished 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 free-
man's laws.

Hadst thou but lived, though stripp'd of power, A watchman on the lonely tower,

1 Copenhagen.

Thy thrilling trump had roused the land,
When fraud or danger were at hand;

By thee, as by the beacon-light,
Our pilots had kept course aright;
"As some proud column, though alone,
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. 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, 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 dishonour's peace he spurn'd,
The sullied olive-branch return'd,
Stood for his country's glory fast,
And nail'd her colours to the mast!

Heaven, to reward his firmness gave
A portion in this honour'd grave;
And ne'er held marble in its trust
Of two such wond'rous 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
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,
For ever 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,

'T will 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
The leaden silence of

your Britain's groans can pierce
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 ecstacy!—
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 watch it floating 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-learn'd 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
Enters Morgana's fated house,
Or in the Chapel Perilous,

Despising spells and demons' force,

Holds converse with the unburied corse: (1)
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 unconfess'd,
He took the Sangreal's holy quest,
And, slumbering, saw the vision high,
He might not view with waking eye. (2)

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; (3)
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-veiled and half-reveal'd;
And Honour, with his spotless shield;
Attention, with fix'd eye; and Fear,
That loves the tale he 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, (4) And that Red King, who, while of old Through Boldrewood the chace he led, By his loved huntsman's arrow bledYtene'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.

CANTO I.

THE CASTLE.

I.

DAY set on Norham's castled steep,
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, (5)
And Cheviot's mountains lone :
The battled towers, the donjon keep, (6)
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,

Seem'd forms of giant height:
Their armour, as it caught the rays,

Flash'd back again the western blaze,

In lines of dazzling light.

The New Forest in Hampshire, anciently so called. 2 William Rufus.

II.

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 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 Horncliffe-hill, a plump1 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.

IV.

<< 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 unbarr'd,
Raised the portcullis' ponderous guard,
The lofty palisade unsparr'd,

And let the draw-bridge fall.

V.

Along the bridge Lord Marmion rode,
Proudly his red-roan charger trod,
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 reveal'd
A token true of Bosworth field;
His eye-brow dark, and eye of fire,
Show'd spirit proud, and prompt to ire:

1 This word properly applies to a flight of water-fowl; but is

applied, by analogy, to a body of horse.

There is a knight of the North Country,
Which leads a lusty plump of spears.
Flodden Field.

62

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-turn'd joints, and strength of limb, Show'd him no carpet-knight so trim, in close fight a champion grim, camps a leader sage.

But,

In

VIII.

Four men-at-arms came at their backs,
With halberd, bill, and battle-axe :

They bore Lord Marmion's lance so strong,
And led his sumpter mules along,
And ambling palfrey, when at need,

Him listed ease his battle-steed.
The last and trustiest of the four,
On high his forky pennon bore;
Like swallow's tail in shape and hue,
Flutter'd the streamer glossy blue,
Where, blazon'd sable, as before,
The towering falcon seem'd to soar.
Last, twenty yeomen, two and two,
In hosen black, and jerkins blue,
With falcons broider'd on each breast,
Attended on their lord's behest.
Each chosen for an archer good,
Knew hunting-craft by lake or wood;
Each one a six-foot bow could bend,
And far a cloth-yard shaft could send;
Each held a boar-spear tough and strong,
And at their belts their quivers hung.
Their dusty palfreys, and array,
Show'd they had march'd a weary way.

We saw the victor win the crest
He wears with worthy pride;
And on the gibbet-tree, reversed,
His foeman's scutcheon tied.
Place, nobles, for the Falcon-knight!

Room, room, ye gentles gay,
For him who conquer'd in the right,
Marmion of Fontenaye!»>

XIII.

Then stepp'd, to meet that noble lord, Sir Hugh the Heron bold,

Baron of Twisell, and of Ford,

And Captain of the Hold. (11), He led Lord Marmion to the deas; Raised o'er the pavement high, And placed him in the upper placeThey feasted full and high: The whiles a northern harper rude Chaunted a rhyme of deadly feud,

« How the fierce Thirlwalls, and Ridleys all, (12)' Stout Willimoteswick,

And Hardriding Dick,

And Hughie of Hawden, and Will o' the Wall,
Have set on Sir Albany Featherstonhaugh,
And taken his life at the Deadman's-shaw.»—1
Scantly Lord Marmion's ear could brook
The harper's barbarous lay;
Yet much he praised the pains he took,
And well those pains did pay:
For lady's suit, and minstrel's strain,
By knight should ne'er be heard in vain.

XIV.

« Now, good Lord Marmion,» Heron says, « Of your fair courtesy,

I pray you bide some little space

In this poor tower with me.

Here may you keep your arms from rust,

May breathe your war-horse well; Seldom hath pass'd a week but just

Or feat of arms befel:

The Scots can rein a mettled steed,
And love to couch a spear,
St George! a stirring life they lead
That have such neighbours near.
Then stay with us a little space,

Our northern wars to learn;
I pray you for your lady's grace.» —
Lord Marmion's brow grew stern.

XV.

The captain mark'd his alter'd look,
And
gave a squire the sign;
A mighty wassel-bowl he took,

And crown'd it high with wine.
Now pledge me here, lord Marmion :
But first, I pray thee fair,

Where hast thou left that page of thine,
That used to serve thy cup of wine,

Whose beauty was so rare?
When last in Raby towers we met,
The boy I closely eyed,

And often mark'd his cheeks were wet
With tears he fain would hide:

The rest of this old ballad may be found in the note.

His was no rugged horse-boy's hand, To burnish shield or sharpen brand,

Or saddle battle-steed;

But meeter seem'd for lady fair,
To fan her cheeks, or curl her hair,
Or through embroidery rich and rare
The slender silk to lead;

His skin was fair, his ringlets gold,
His bosom when he sigh'd,
The russet doublet's rugged fold
Could scarce repel its pride!
Say, hast thou given that lovely youth
To serve in lady's bower?

Or was the gentle page, in sooth,
A gentle paramour ?»——

XVI.

Lord Marmion ill could brook such jest ; He roll'd his kindling eye,

With pain his rising wrath suppress'd,

Yet made a calm reply:

<< That boy thou thought'st so goodly fair,
He might not brook the northern air.
More of his fate if thou wouldst learn
I left him sick in Lindisfarn:
Enough of him.-But, Heron, say,
Why does thy lovely lady gay
Disdain to grace the hall to-day?
Or has that dame, so fair and sage,
Gone on some pious pilgrimage?»-
He spoke in covert scorn, for fame
Whisper'd light tales of Heron's dame.

XVII.

Unmark'd, at least unreck'd, the taunt,
Careless the knight replied,

<< No bird whose feathers gaily flaunt,
Delights in cage to bide :

Norham is grim, and grated close,
Hemm'd in by battlement and fosse,
And many a darksome tower;
And better loves my lady bright
To sit in liberty and light,

In fair Queen Margaret's bower.
We hold our greyhound in our hand,
Our falcon on our glove;

But where shall we find leash or band,

For dame that loves to rove?

Let the wild falcon soar her swing,

She'll stoop when she has tired her wing.»