Marmion Read online

Scott himself revised ‘Marmion’ in 1831, and the interleaved copy which he used formed the basis of the text given by Lockhart in the uniform edition of the Poetical Works published in 1833. This will remain the standard text. It is that which is followed in the present volume, in which there will be found only three―in reality only two―important instances of divergence from Lockhart’s readings. The earlier editions have been collated with that of 1833, and Mr. W. J. Rolfe’s careful and scholarly Boston edition has likewise been consulted. It has not been considered necessary to follow Mr. Rolfe in several alterations he has made on Lockhart; but he introduces one emendation which readily commends itself to the reader’s intelligence, and it is adopted in the present volume. This is in the punctuation of the opening lines in the first stanza of Canto II. Lockhart completes a sentence at the end of the fifth line, whereas the sense manifestly carries the period on to the eleventh line. In the third Introd., line 228, the reading of the earlier editions is followed in giving ‘From me’ instead of ‘For me,’ as the meaning is thereby simplified and made more direct. In III. xiv. 234, the modern versions of Lockhart’s text give ‘proudest princes veil their eyes,’ where Lockhart himself agrees with the earlier editions in reading ‘vail’. The restoration of the latter form needs no defence. The Elizabethan words in the Poem are not infrequent, giving it, as they do, a certain air of archaic dignity, and there can be little doubt that ‘vail’ was Scott’s word here, used in its Shakespearian sense of ‘lower’ or ‘cast down,’ and recalling Venus as ‘she vailed her eyelids.’

  MARMION

  A TALE OF FLODDEN FIELD

  IN SIX CANTOS

  Alas! that Scottish maid should sing

  The combat where her lover fell!

  That Scottish Bard should wake the string,

  The triumph of our foes to tell!

  LEYDEN.

  TO

  THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

  HENRY, LORD MONTAGUE

  &c. &c. &c.

  THIS ROMANCE IS INSCRIBED

  BY

  THE AUTHOR

  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 trill’d 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 pass’d the heather-bell

  That bloom’d 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 vanish’d 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 grasp’d 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 hallow’d tomb!

  Deep graved in every British heart,

  O never let those names depart!

  Say to your sons,-Lo, here his grave,

  Who victor died on Gadite wave;

  To him, as to the burning levin,

  Short, bright, resistless course was given.

  Where’er his country’s foes were found,

  Was heard the fated thunder’s sound,

  Till burst the bolt on yonder shore,

  Roll’d, blazed, destroyed,-and was no more.

  Nor mourn ye less his perished worth,

  Who bade the conqueror go forth,

  And launch’d that thunderbolt of war

  On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar;

  Who, born to guide such high emprize,

  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,

  Spum’d at the sordid lust of pelf,

  And served his Albion for herself;

  Who, when the frantic crowd amain

  Strain’d at subjection’s bursting rein,

  O’er their wild mood full conquest gain’d,

  The pride, he would not crush, restrain’d,

  Show’d their fierce zeal a worthier cause,

  And brought the freeman’s arm, to aid the freeman’s laws.

  Had’st thou but lived, though stripp’d 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 propp’d the tottering throne:

  Now is the stately column broke,

  The beacon-light is quench’d 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, claim’d his prey,

  With Palinure’s unalter’d mood,

  Firm at his dangerous post he stood;

  Each call for needful rest repell’d,

  With dying hand the rudder held,

  Till, in his fall, with fateful sway,

  The steerage of the realm gave way!

  Th
en, 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 hallow’d 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 employ’d, 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 suppress’d,

  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 agen,

  ‘All peace on earth, good-will to men;’

  If ever from an English heart,

  O, here let prejudice depart,

  And, partial feeling cast aside,

  Record, that Fox a Briton died!

  When Europe crouch’d to France’s yoke,

  And Austria bent, and Prussia broke,

  And the firm Russian’s purpose brave,

  Was barter’d by a timorous slave,

  Even then dishonour’s peace he spurn’d,

  The sullied olive-branch return’d,

  Stood for his country’s glory fast,

  And nail’d her colours to the mast!

  Heaven, to reward his firmness, gave

  A portion in this honour’d grave,

  And ne’er held marble in its trust

  Of two such wondrous men the dust.

  With more than mortal powers endow’d,

  How high they soar’d 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,

  Look’d 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,

  For ever tomb’d beneath the stone,

  Where-taming thought to human pride!-

  The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.

  Drop upon Fox’s grave the tear,

  ‘Twill 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 agen?’

  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, O, how impotent and vain

  This grateful tributary strain!

  Though not unmark’d from northern clime,

  Ye heard the Border Minstrel’s rhyme:

  His Gothic harp has o’er you rung;

  The Bard you deign’d to praise, your deathless names has sung.

  Stay yet, illusion, stay a while,

  My wilder’d 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 bard-like mood,

  Were here a tribute mean and low,

  Though all their mingled streams could flow-

  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 fancied 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-learn’d taste refined.

  But thou, my friend, canst fitly tell,

  (For 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 move,

  (Alas, that lawless was their love!)

  He sought proud Tarquin in his den,

  And freed full sixty knights; or when,

  A sinful man, and unconfess’d,

  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

  Scorn’d 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 mak
e 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 marr’d the lofty line.

  Warm’d 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 veil’d and half reveal’d;

  And Honour, with his spotless shield;

  Attention, with fix’d eye; and Fear,

  That loves the tale she shrinks to hear;

  And gentle Courtesy; and Faith,

  Unchanged by sufferings, time, or death;

  And Valour, 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

  Renew’d such legendary strain;

  For thou hast sung, how He of Gaul,

  That Amadis so famed in hall,

  For Oriana, foil’d 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.

  CANTO FIRST.

  THE CASTLE.

  I.