Marmion. Walter Scott

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-

       The star of Brandenburgh arose!

       Thou couldst not live to see her beam 55

       For ever quench’d in Jena’s stream.

       Lamented Chief!-it was not given

       To thee to change the doom of Heaven,

       And crush that dragon in its birth,

       Predestined scourge of guilty earth. 60

       Lamented Chief!-not thine the power,

       To save in that presumptuous hour,

       When Prussia hurried to the field,

       And snatch’d the spear, but left the shield!

       Valour and skill ’twas thine to try, 65

       And, tried in vain, ’twas thine to die.

       Ill had it seem’d thy silver hair

       The last, the bitterest pang to share,

       For princedoms reft, and scutcheons riven,

       And birthrights to usurpers given; 70

       Thy land’s, thy children’s wrongs to feel,

       And witness woes thou could’st not heal!

       On thee relenting Heaven bestows

       For honour’d life an honour’d close;

       And when revolves, in time’s sure change, 75

       The hour of Germany’s revenge,

       When, breathing fury for her sake,

       Some new Arminius shall awake,

       Her champion, ere he strike, shall come

       To whet his sword on BRUNSWICK’S tomb, 80

       ‘Or of the Red-Cross hero teach

       Dauntless in dungeon as on breach:

       Alike to him the sea, the shore,

       The brand, the bridle, or the oar:

       Alike to him the war that calls 85

       Its votaries to the shatter’d walls,

       Which the grim Turk, besmear’d with blood,

       Against the Invincible made good;

       Or that, whose thundering voice could wake

       The silence of the polar lake, 90

       When stubborn Russ, and metal’d Swede,

       On the warp’d wave their death-game play’d;

       Or that, where Vengeance and Affright

       Howl’d round the father of the fight,

       Who snatch’d, on Alexandria’s sand, 95

       The conqueror’s wreath with dying hand.

       ‘Or, if to touch such chord be thine,

       Restore the ancient tragic line,

       And emulate the notes that rung

       From the wild harp, which silent hung 100

       By silver Avon’s holy shore,

       Till twice an hundred years roll’d o’er;

       When she, the bold Enchantress, came,

       With fearless hand and heart on flame!

       From the pale willow snatch’d the treasure, 105

       And swept it with a kindred measure,

       Till Avon’s swans, while rung the grove

       With Montfort’s hate and Basil’s love,

       Awakening at the inspired strain,

       Deem’d their own Shakspeare lived again.’ 110

       Thy friendship thus thy judgment wronging,

       With praises not to me belonging,

       In task more meet for mightiest powers,

       Wouldst thou engage my thriftless hours.

       But say, my Erskine, hast thou weigh’d 115

       That secret power by all obey’d,

       Which warps not less the passive mind,

       Its source conceal’d or undefined;

       Whether an impulse, that has birth

       Soon as the infant wakes on earth, 120