But scant three miles the band had rode,
When o'er a height they passed,

And, sudden, close before them showed

His towers, Tantallon vast;

Broad, massive, high, and stretching far,
And held impregnable in war.

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On a projecting rock they rose,

And round three sides the ocean flows,
The fourth did battled walls enclose

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And double mound and fosse.

By narrow drawbridge, outworks strong,
Through studded gates, an entrance long,
To the main court they cross.

It was a wide and stately square:
Around were lodgings fit and fair

And towers of various form,
Which on the court projected far,
And broke its lines quadrangular.

Here was square keep, there turret high,
Or pinnacle that sought the sky,
Whence oft the warder could descry

The gathering ocean storm.

XXXIV.

Here did they rest, the princely care

Of Douglas, why should I declare,

Or say they met reception fair?

Or why the tidings say,

At that sore marvelled Marmion;
And Douglas hoped his monarch's hand
Would soon subdue Northumberland :

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And not a history.

At length they heard the Scottish host
On that high ridge had made their post,
Which frowns o'er Millfield Plain;
And that brave Surrey many a band
Had gathered in the Southern land,
And marched into Northumberland,

And camp at Wooler ta'en.
Marmion, like charger in the stall,
That hears, without, the trumpet-call,
Began to chafe and swear:

"A sorry thing to hide my head
In castle, like a fearful maid,
When such a field is near!
Needs must I see this battle-day:
Death to my fame if such a fray
Were fought and Marmion away!
The Douglas, too, I wot not why,
Hath 'bated of his courtesy:
No longer in his halls I'll stay."

Then bade his band they should array
For march against the dawning day.

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CANTO SIXTH.

THE BATTLE.

I.

WHILE great events were on the gale,
And each hour brought a varying tale,
And the demeanor, 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;

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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.

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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 bartizan and line

And bastion, tower and vantage-coign;
Above the booming ocean leant
The far-projecting battlement;
The billows burst, in ceaseless flow,
Upon the precipice below.

Where'er Tantallon faced the land,

Gate-works and walls were strongly manned;

No need upon the sea-girt side;
The steepy rock and frantic tide,
Approach of human step denied;