Cold diffidence, and age's frost
In the full tide of song were lost;
Each blank in faithless memory void,
The poet's glowing thought supplied;
And while his harp responsive rung,
'Twas thus the LATEST MINSTREL sung.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel.
O WOMAN! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made:
When pains and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!
Scarce were the piteous accents said
When, with the baron's casque, the maid
To the nigh streamlet ran :
Forgot were hatreds, wrongs, and fears;
The plaintive voice alone she hears,
Sees but the dying man.
She stooped her by the runnel's side,
But in abhorrence backward drew ;
For, oozing from the mountain wide,
Where raged the war, a dark red tide
Was curdling in the streamlet blue.
Where shall she turn! Behold her mark
A little fountain-cell,
Where water, clear as diamond-spark,
In a stone basin fell.
Above, some half-worn letters say,
Drink · weary · pilgrim・ drink
She filled the helm, and back she hied,
And with surprise and joy espied
A monk supporting Marmion's head;
A pious man, whom duty brought
To dubious verge of battle fought,
To shrive the dying, bless the dead.
Deep drank Lord Marmion of the wave, And as she stooped his brow to lave"Is it the hand of Clare," he said, "Or injured Constance, bathes my head?" Then as remembrance rose"Speak not to me of shrift or prayer, I must redress her woes.
Short space, few words, are mine to spare ; Forgive and listen, gentle Clare!"
"Alas!" she said, "the while-
Oh think of your immortal weal!
In vain for Constance is your zeal ;
She died at Holy Isle !"
Lord Marmion started from the ground,
As light as if he felt no wound;
Though in the action burst the tide,
In torrents from his wounded side.
"Then it was truth!"-he said "I knew
That the dark presage must be true.
I would the fiend, to whom belongs
The vengeance due to all her wrongs,
Would spare me but a day!
For wasting fire, and dying groan,
And priests slain on the altar stone,
Might bribe him for delay.
It may not be !—this dizzy trance-
Curse on yon base marauder's lance,
And doubly cursed my failing brand!
A sinful heart makes feeble hand."
Then, fainting, down on earth he sunk,
Supported by the trembling monk.
With fruitless labour Clara bound
And strove to staunch the gushing wound:
The monk, with unavailing cares,
Exhausted all the Church's prayers ;
Ever, he said, that, close and near,
A lady's voice was in his ear,
And that the priest he could not hear,
For that she ever sung,
"In the lost battle, borne down by the flying Where mingles war's rattle with groans of the dying!"
"Avoid thee, fiend !—with cruel hand,
Shake not the dying sinner's sand!
O look, my son, upon yon sign
Of the Redeemer's grace divine;
O think on faith and bliss!
By many a death-bed I have been,
And many a sinner's parting seen,
But never aught like this."
The war, that for a space did fail,
Now trebly thundering, swelled the gale,
And-Stanley! was the cry;
A light on Marmion's visage spread,
And fired his glazing eye:
With dying hand above his head
He shook the fragment of his blade,
And shouted "Victory!
Charge, Chester, charge! on, Stanley, on!"
Were the last words of Marmion.
BORN at Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, and educated at Christ's Hospital, London, and Jesus College, Cambridge. At Christ's Hospital began his cherished friendship with Charles Lamb, the author of Essays by Elia. Resided for some years in the Lake District on terms of intimacy with Wordsworth and Southey. During the last twenty years of his life lived at Highgate, near London, where he died in 1834. His poetical works are:-Christabel (a fragment); The Ancient Mariner; Ode to Mont Blanc; Genevieve, etc.
THE DISSOLUTION OF FRIENDSHIP.
ALAS! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain :
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain.
And thus it chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother :
They parted-ne'er to meet again!
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining;
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which have been rent asunder:
A dreary sea now flows between ;
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.
FROM “THE ANCIENT MARINER."
OH sweeter than the marriage-feast,
'Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!—
To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay!
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all.
ALL thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o'er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruined tower.
The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene,
Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve,
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