Lord Marmion's bugles blew to horse : No point of courtesy was lost; High thanks were by Lord Marmion paid, Till they roll'd forth upon the air, 1 1 [MS." Slow they roll'd forth upon the air."] TO THE REV. JOHN MARRIOTT, A.M.1 Ashestiel, Ettrick Forest. THE scenes are desert now, and bare, When these waste glens with copse were lined, Yon Thorn-perchance whose prickly spears The changes of his parent dell,3 [See a note to the Border Minstrelsy, vol. iv. p. 375.] 3["The second epistle opens again with 'chance and change; ' but it cannot be denied that the mode in which it is introduced is new and poetical. The comparison of Ettrick Forest, now open and naked, with the state in which it once was-covered with wood, the favourite resort of the royal hunt, and the refuge of daring outlaws-leads the poet to imagine an ancient thorn gifted with the powers of reason, and relating the various scenes which it Since he, so grey and stubborn now, O'er every What alders shaded every brook! "Here, in my shade," methinks he'd say, (The neighbouring dingle bears his name,) Have bounded by, through gay green-wood. has witnessed during a period of three hundred years. A melancholy train of fancy is naturally encouraged by the idea."-Monthly Review.] 1 Mountain-ash, [MS." How broad the ash his shadows flung, How to the rock the rowan clung."] |