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 circuit did combine

Bulwark, and bartisan, 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 ;

And thus these lines, and ramparts rude,

Were left in deepest solitude.

III.

And, for they were so lonely, Clare
Would to these battlements repair,

And muse upon her sorrows there,
And list the sea-bird's cry;

Or slow, like noon-tide ghost, would glide
Along the dark-gray bulwarks' side,

And ever on the heaving tide

Look down with weary eye.