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INTRODUCTION TO CANTO FIRST.

To WILLIAM STEWART ROSE, ESQ.
Ashestiel, Ettrick Forest.

NOVEMBER'S sky is chill and drear,
November's leaf is red and sear :
Late, gazing down the steepy linn
That hems our little garden in,
Low in its dark and narrow glen,
You scarce the rivulet might ken,
So thick the tangled greenwood grew,
So feeble trilled the streamlet through;
Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen
Through bush and brier, no longer green,
An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,
Brawls over rock and wild cascade,
And, foaming brown with double speed,
Hurries its waters to the Tweed.

No longer autumn's glowing red Upon our Forest hills is shed: No more, beneath the evening beam, Fair Tweed reflects their purple gleam. Away hath passed the heather-bell That bloomed so rich on Needpath-fell; Sallow his brow, and russet bare Are now the sister-heights of Yair. The sheep, before the pinching heaven, To sheltered dale and down are driven, Where yet some faded herbage pines, And yet a watery sunbeam shines; In meek despondency they eye The withered sward and wintry sky, And far beneath their summer hill Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rill. The shepherd shifts his mantle's fold, And wraps him closer from the cold: His dogs no merry circles wheel, But shivering follow at his heel; A cowering glance they often cast,

As deeper moans the gathering blast.

My imps, though hardy, bold, and wild, As best befits the mountain child, Feel the sad influence of the hour, And wail the daisy's vanished flower, Their summer gambols tell, and mourn, And anxious ask, - Will spring return, And birds and lambs again be gay, And blossoms clothe the hawthorn spray?

Yes, prattlers, yes. The daisy's flower Again shall paint your summer bower; Again the hawthorn shall supply The garlands you delight to tie; The lambs upon the lea shall bound, The wild birds carol to the round; And while you frolic light as they, Too short shall seem the summer day.

To mute and to material things
New life revolving summer brings ;
The genial call dead Nature hears,
And in her glory reappears.

But oh! my country's wintry state
What second spring shall renovate?
What powerful call shall bid arise
The buried warlike and the wise,
The mind that thought for Britain's weal,
The hand that grasped the victor steel?
The vernal sun new life bestows
Even on the meanest flower that blows;
But vainly, vainly may he shine
Where Glory weeps o'er NELSON's shrine,
And vainly pierce the solemn gloom
That shrouds, O PITT, thy hallowed tomb!

Nor mourn ye less his perished worth
Who bade the conqueror go forth,
And launched that thunderbolt of war
On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar;
Who, born to guide such high emprise,
For Britain's weal was early wise;
Alas! to whom the Almighty gave,
For Britain's sins, an early grave!
His worth who, in his mightiest hour,
A bauble held the pride of power,
Spurned at the sordid lust of pelf,
And served his Albion for herself;
Who, when the frantic crowd amain
Strained at subjection's bursting rein,

O'er their wild mood full conquest gained,
The pride, he would not crush, restrained,
Showed their fierce zeal a worthier cause,
And brought the freeman's arm to aid the
freeman's laws.

Hadst thou but lived, though stripped of

power,

A watchman on the lonely tower,
Thy thrilling trump had roused the land,

When fraud or danger were at hand;
By thee, as by the beacon-light,
Our pilots had kept course aright;
As some proud column, though alone,
Thy strength had propped the tottering
throne.

Now is the stately column broke,

The beacon-light is quenched in smoke,
The trumpet's silver sound is still,
The warder silent on the hill!

Oh, think, how to his latest day.
When Death, just hovering, claimed his prey,
With Palinure's unaltered mood,

Firm at his dangerous post he stood,
Each call for needful rest repelled,
With dying hand the rudder held,
Till, in his fall, with fateful sway,
The steerage of the realm gave way!
Then, while on Britain's thousand plains
One unpolluted church remains,
Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around
The bloody tocsin's maddening sound,
But still, upon the hallowed day,
Convoke the swains to praise and pray;
While faith and civil peace are dear,
Grace this cold marble with a tear,
He who preserved them, PITT, lies here.
Nor yet suppress the generous sigh
Because his rival slumbers nigh,
Nor be thy requiescat dumb
Lest it be said o'er Fox's tomb;
For talents mourn, untimely lost,
When best employed and wanted most;
Mourn genius high, and lore profound,
And wit that loved to play, not wound;
And all the reasoning powers divine,
To penetrate, resolve, combine;
And feelings keen, and fancy's glow,
They sleep with him who sleeps below:
And, if thou mourn'st they could not save
From error him who owns this grave,
Be every harsher thought suppressed,
And sacred be the last long rest.
Here, where the end of earthly things
Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings;
Where stiff the hand, and still the tongue,
Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung;
Here, where the fretted aisles prolong
The distant notes of holy song,

As if some angel spoke again,

All peace on earth, good-will to men;'
If ever from an English heart,
Oh, here let prejudice depart,
And, partial feeling cast aside,
Record that Fox a Briton died!

When Europe crouched to France's yoke.
And Austria bent, and Prussia broke,
And the firm Russian's purpose brave
Was bartered by a timorous slave,

Even then dishonor's peace he spurned,
The sullied olive-branch returned,
Stood for his country's glory fast,
And nailed her colors to the mast!
Heaven, to reward his firmness, gave
A portion in this honored grave,
And ne'er held marble in its trust
Of two such wondrous men the dust.

With more than mortal powers endowed, How high they soared above the crowd! Theirs was no common party race, Jostling by dark intrigue for place; Like fabled Gods, their mighty war Shook realms and nations in its jar; Beneath each banner proud to stand, Looked up the noblest of the land, Till through the British world were known The names of PITT and Fox alone. Spells of such force no wizard grave E er framed in dark Thessalian cave, Though his could drain the ocean dry, And force the planets from the sky. These spells are spent, and, spent with these, The wine of life is on the lees, Genius and taste and talent gone, Forever tombed beneath the stone, Where- taming thought to human pride ! The mighty chiefs sleep side by side. Drop upon Fox's grave the tear, 'T will trickle to his rival's bier; O'er PITT's the mournful requiem sound, And Fox's shall the notes rebound. The solemn echo seems to cry, · Here let their discord with them die. Speak not for those a separate doom Whom Fate made brothers in the tomb; But search the land, of living men, Where wilt thou find their like again?'

Rest, ardent spirits, till the cries Of dying nature bid you rise! Not even your Britain's groans can pierce The leaden silence of your hearse; Then, oh, how impotent and vain This grateful tributary strain! Though not unmarked from northern clime, Ye heard the Border Minstrel's rhyme: His Gothic harp has o'er you rung; The Bard you deigned to praise, your deathless names has sung.

Stay yet, illusion, stay a while,
My wildered fancy still beguile!
From this high theme how can I part,
Ere half unloaded is my heart!
For all the tears e'er sorrow drew,
And all the raptures fancy knew,
And all the keener rush of blood

That throbs through bard in bardlike mood,

Woe, wonder, and sensation high,
In one spring-tide of ecstasy!
It will not be it may not last
The vision of enchantment's past :
Like frostwork in the morning ray,
The fancy fabric melts away;
Each Gothic arch, memorial-stone,
And long, dim, lofty aisle, are gone;
And, lingering last, deception dear,
The choir's high sounds die on my ear.
Now slow return the lonely down,
The silent pastures bleak and brown,
The farm begirt with copsewood wild,
The gambols of each frolic child,
Mixing their shrill cries with the tone
Of Tweed's dark waters rushing on.

Prompt on unequal tasks to run,
Thus Nature disciplines her son :
Meeter, she says, for me to stray,
And waste the solitary day

In plucking from yon fen the reed,
And watch it floating down the Tweed,
Or idly list the shrilling lay

With which the milkmaid cheers her way.
Marking its cadence rise and fail,
As from the field, beneath her pail,
She trips it down the uneven dale;
Meeter for me, by yonder cairn,
The ancient shepherd's tale to learn,
Though oft he stop in rustic fear,
Lest his old legends tire the ear
Of one who, in his simple mind,
May boast of book-learned taste refined.

---

But thou, my friend, canst fitly tellFor few have read romance so well How still the legendary lay O'er poet's bosom holds its sway; How on the ancient minstrel strain Time lays his palsied hand in vain ; And how our hearts at doughty deeds, By warriors wrought in steely weeds, Still throb for fear and pity's sake; As when the Champion of the Lake Enters Morgana's fated house, Or in the Chapel Perilous, Despising spells and demons' force, Holds converse with the unburied corse; Or when, Dame Ganore's grace to moveAlas, that lawless was their love! He sought proud Tarquin in his den, And freed full sixty knights; or when, A sinful man and unconfessed, He took the Sangreal's holy quest, And slumbering saw the vision high He might not view with waking eye.

The mightiest chiefs of British song Scorned not such legends to prolong. They gleam through Spenser's elfin dream, And mix in Milton's heavenly theme: And Dryden, in immortal strain, Had raised the Table Round again, But that a ribald king and court Bade him toil on, to make them sport; Demanded for their niggard pay, Fit for their souls, a looser lay, Licentious satire, song, and play; The world defrauded of the high design, Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line.

Warmed by such names, well may we then,
Though dwindled sons of little men,
Essay to break a feeble lance

In the fair fields of old romance;
Or seek the moated castle's cell,
Where long through talisman and spell,
While tyrants ruled and damsels wept,
Thy Genius, Chivalry, hath slept.
There sound the harpings of the North,
Till he awake and sally forth,
On venturous quest to prick again,
In all his arms, with all his train,

Shield, lance, and brand, and plume, and scarf,

Fay, giant, dragon, squire, and dwarf,
And wizard with his wand of might,
And errant maid on palfrey white.
Around the Genius weave their spells,
Pure Love, who scarce his passion tells;
Mystery, half veiled and half revealed;
And Honor, with his spotless shield;
Attention, with fixed eye; and Fear,
That loves the tale she shrinks to hear;
And gentle Courtesy; and Faith,
Unchanged by sufferings, time, or death;
And Valor, lion-mettled lord,
Leaning upon his own good sword.

Well has thy fair achievement shown
A worthy meed may thus be won:
Ytene's oaks - beneath whose shade
Their theme the merry minstrels made,
Of Ascapart, and Bevis bold,

And that Red King, who, while of old
Through Boldrewood the chase he led,
By his loved huntsman's arrow bled-
Ytene's oaks have heard again
Renewed such legendary strain;
For thou hast sung, how he of Gaul,
That Amadis so famed in hall,
For Oriana, foiled in fight
The Necromancer's felon might;
And well in modern verse hast wove
Partenopex's mystic love:

Hear, then, attentive to my lay,
A knightly tale of Albion's elder day.

A distant trampling sound he hears; He looks abroad, and soon appears, O'er Horncliff-hill, a plump of spears

Beneath a pennon gay;

A horseman, darting from the crowd
Like lightning from a summer cloud,
Spurs on his mettled courser proud,

Before the dark array.
Beneath the sable palisade
That closed the castle barricade,

His bugle-horn he blew;
The warder hasted from the wall,
And warned the captain in the hall,
For well the blast he knew;
And joyfully that knight did call
To sewer, squire, and seneschal.

IV.

'Now broach ye a pipe of Malvoisie, Bring pasties of the doe,

And quickly make the entrance free,

And bid my heralds ready be,
And every minstrel sound his glee,
And all our trumpets blow;

And, from the platform, spare ye not
To fire a noble salvo-shot;

Lord Marmion waits below!'
Then to the castle's lower ward
Sped forty yeomen tall,
The iron-studded gates unbarred,
Raised the portcullis' ponderous guard,
The lofty palisade unsparred,
And let the drawbridge fall.

V.

Along the bridge Lord Marmion rode,
Proudly his red-roan charger trode,
His helm hung at the saddle bow;
Well by his visage you might know
He was a stalworth knight and keen,
And had in many a battle been ;
The scar on his brown cheek revealed
A token true of Bosworth field;
His eyebrow dark and eye of fire
Showed spirit proud and prompt to ire,
Yet lines of thought upon his cheek
Did deep design and counsel speak.
His forehead, by his casque worn bare,
His thick moustache and curly hair,
Coal-black, and grizzled here and there,
But more through toil than age,
His square-turned joints and strength of
limb.

Showed him no carpet knight so trim. But in close fight a champion grim, In camps a leader sage.

VI.

Well was he armed from head to heel,
In mail and plate of Milan steel;
But his strong helm, of mighty cost,
Was all with burnished gold embossed.
Amid the plumage of the crest

A falcon hovered on her nest,

With wings outspread and forward breast.
E'en such a falcon, on his shield,
Soared sable in an azure field:
The golden legend bore aright,

Who checks at me, to death is dight.'
Blue was the charger's broidered rein;
Blue ribbons decked his arching mane;
The knightly housing's ample fold
Was velvet blue and trapped with gold.

VII.

Behind him rode two gallant squires,
Of noble name and knightly sires:
They burned the gilded spurs to claim,
For well could each a war-horse tame,
Could draw the bow, the sword could sway,
And lightly bear the ring away;
Nor less with courteous precepts stored,
Could dance in hall, and carve at board,
And frame love-ditties passing rare,
And sing them to a lady fair.