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MARMION.

CANTO SIXTH.

The Battle.

MARMION.

CANTO SIXTH.

The Battle.

I.

WHILE great events were on the gale, And each hour brought a varying tale, And the demeanour, changed and cold, Of Douglas fretted Marmion bold, And, like the impatient steed of war, He snuffed the battle from afar;

And hopes were none, that back again Herald should come from Terouenne,

Where England's King in leaguer lay,

Before decisive battle-day;

While these things were, the mournful Clare Did in the Dame's devotions share :

For the good Countess ceaseless prayed,

To Heaven and Saints, her sons to aid,
And, with short interval, did pass

From prayer to book, from book to mass,
And all in high Baronial pride,-

A life both dull and dignified ;

Yet as Lord Marmion nothing pressed

Upon her intervals of rest,

Dejected Clara well could bear

The formal state, the lengthened prayer,
Though dearest to her wounded heart

The hours that she might spend apart.

II.

I said, Tantallon's dizzy steep

Hung o'er the margin of the deep,

Many a rude tower and rampart there

Repelled the insult of the air,

Which, when the tempest vexed the sky,

Half breeze, half spray, came whistling by.

Above the rest, a turret square

Did o'er its Gothic entrance bear,

Of sculpture rude, a stony shield;

The Bloody Heart was in the field,
And in the chief three mullets stood,

The cognizance of Douglas blood.

The turret held a narrow stair,

Which, mounted, gave you access where

A parapet's embattled row

Did seaward round the castle go;

Sometimes in dizzy steps descending,

Sometimes in narrow circuit bending,
Sometimes in platform broad extending,

Its varying circle did combine

Bulwark, and bartisan, and line,

And bastion, tower, and vantage-coign;

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