Marmion

‘Sister, let thy sorrows cease;                            600
Sinful brother, part in peace!’
From that dire dungeon, place of doom,
Of execution too, and tomb,
Paced forth the judges three;
Sorrow it were, and shame, to tell                      605
The butcher-work that there befell,
When they had glided from the cell
Of sin and misery.

XXXIII

An hundred winding steps convey
That conclave to the upper day;                            610
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,)                    615
And cross’d themselves for terror’s sake,
As hurrying, tottering on,
Even in the vesper’s heavenly tone,
They seem’d to hear a dying groan,
And bade the passing knell to toll                        620
For welfare of a parting soul.
Slow o’er the midnight wave it swung,
Northumbrian rocks in answer rung;
To Warkworth cell the echoes roll’d,
His beads the wakeful hermit told,                        625
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,                      630
Listed before, aside, behind,
Then couch’d him down beside the hind,
And quaked among the mountain fern,
To hear that sound, so dull and stern.

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 chequer’d scene of joy and sorrow;
Like streamlet of the mountain north,                        5
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,                          10
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                      15
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;                  20
Then, wild as cloud, or stream, or gale,
Flow on, flow unconfined, my Tale!

Need I to thee, dear Erskine, tell
I love the license all too well,
In sounds now lowly, and now strong,                        25
To raise the desultory song?
Oft, when ‘mid such capricious chime,
Some transient fit of lofty rhyme
To thy kind judgment seem’d excuse
For many an error of the muse,                              30
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                    35
Immortal laurels ever bloom:
Instructive of the feebler bard,
Still from the grave their voice is heard;
From them, and from the paths they show’d,
Choose honour’d guide and practised road;                  40
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                                  45
For Brunswick’s venerable hearse?
What! not a line, a tear, a sigh,
When valour bleeds for liberty? -
Oh, hero of that glorious time,
When, with unrivall’d light sublime, –                       50
Though martial Austria, and though all
The might of Russia, and the Gaul,
Though banded Europe stood her foes-