But ere they breathed the fresher air
They heard the shriekings of despair,
And many a stifled groan.

With speed their upward way they take,-
Such speed as age and fear can make,
And crossed themselves for terror's sake,
As hurrying, tottering on,
Even in the vesper's heavenly tone
They seemed to hear a dying groan,
And bade the passing knell to toll
For welfare of a parting soul.
Slow o'er the midnight wave it swung,
Northumbrian rocks in answer rung;
To Warkworth cell the echoes rolled,
His beads the wakeful hermit told;
The Bamborough peasant raised his head,
But slept ere half a prayer he said;
So far was heard the mighty knell,
The stag sprung up on Cheviot Fell,
Spread his broad nostril to the wind,
Listed before, aside, behind,

Then couched him down beside the hind,
And quaked among the mountain fern,
To hear that sound so dull and stern.

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INTRODUCTION TO CANTO THIRD

TO WILLIAM ERSKINE, ESQ.

Ashestiel, Ettrick Forest.

LIKE April morning clouds, that pass
With varying shadow o'er the grass,
And imitate on field and furrow

Life's checkered scene of joy and sorrow;
Like streamlet of the mountain north,
Now in a torrent racing forth,
Now winding slow its silver train,
And almost slumbering on the plain;
Like breezes of the autumn day,
Whose voice inconstant dies away,
And ever swells again as fast
When the ear deems its murmur past;
Thus various, my romantic theme
Flits, winds, or sinks, a morning dream.
Yet pleased, our eye pursues the trace
Of Light and Shade's inconstant race;
Pleased, views the rivulet afar,
Weaving its maze irregular;

And pleased, we listen as the breeze

Heaves its wild sigh through Autumn trees:
Then, wild as cloud, or stream, or gale,
Flow on, flow unconfined, my tale!

ΤΟ

20

Need I to thee, dear Erskine, tell
I love the license all too well,
In sounds now lowly, and now strong,
To raise the desultory song?

Oft, when mid such capricious chime
Some transient fit of loftier rhyme
To thy kind judgment seemed excuse
For many an error of the muse,
Oft hast thou said, "If still misspent,
Thine hours to poetry are lent,

Go, and to tame thy wandering course,
Quaff from the fountain at the source;
Approach those masters o'er whose tomb
Immortal laurels ever bloom:

Instructive of the feebler bard,

Still from the grave their voice is heard;
From them, and from the paths they showed,
Choose honored guide and practised road;
Nor ramble on through brake and maze,
With harpers rude of barbarous days.

"Or deem'st thou not our later time Yields topic meet for classic rhyme? Hast thou no elegiac verse

For BRUNSWICK'S° venerable hearse?
What! not a line, a tear, a sigh,
When valor bleeds for liberty?

Oh, hero of that glorious time,
When, with unrivalled light sublime,
Though martial Austria, and though all
The might of Russia, and the Gaul,
Though banded Europe stood her foes-
The star of Brandenburg arose !
Thou couldst not live to see her beam

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Forever quenched in Jena's stream.
Lamented chief! - it was not given
To thee to change the doom of Heaven,
And crush that dragon in its birth,
Predestined scourge of guilty earth.
Lamented chief! - not thine the
power
To save in that presumptuous hour
When Prussia hurried to the field,
And snatched the spear but left the shield!
Valor and skill 't was thine to try,
And, tried in vain, 't was thine to die.
Ill had it seemed thy silver hair
The last, the bitterest pang to share,
For princedoms reft, and scutcheons riven,
And birthrights to usurpers given;
Thy land's, thy children's wrongs to feel,
And witness woes thou couldst not heal!
On thee relenting Heaven bestows
For honored life an honored close;
And when revolves, in time's sure change,
The hour of Germany's revenge,
When, breathing fury for her sake,
Some new Arminius shall awake,
Her champion, ere he strike, shall come
To whet his sword on BRUNSWICK's tomb.

"Or of the Red-Cross° hero teach,
Dauntless in dungeon as on breach.
Alike to him the sea, the shore,
The brand, the bridle, or the oar:
Alike to him the war that calls
Its votaries to the shattered walls

Which the grim Turk, besmeared with blood,
Against the Invincible made good;

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Or that whose thundering voice could wake
The silence of the polar lake,

When stubborn Russ and mettled Swede
On the warped wave their death-game played;
Or that where Vengeance and Affright
Howled round the father of the fight,
Who snatched on Alexandria's sand
The conqueror's wreath with dying hand.

"Or, if to touch such chord be thine,
Restore the ancient tragic line,
And emulate the notes that rung
From the wild harp which silent hung
By silver Avon's holy shore

Till twice an hundred years rolled o'er;
When she, the bold Enchantress, came,
With fearless hand and heart on flame,
From the pale willow snatched the treasure,
And swept it with a kindred measure,
Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove
With Montfort's hate and Basil's love,
Awakening at the inspired strain,
Deemed their own Shakespeare lived again."

Thy friendship thus thy judgment wronging
With praises not to me belonging,

In task more meet for mightiest powers
Wouldst thou engage my thriftless hours.
But say, my Erskine, hast thou weighed
That secret power by all obeyed,
Which warps not less the passive mind,
Its source concealed or undefined;
Whether an impulse, that has birth
Soon as the infant wakes on earth,