Walter Scott - Marmion

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 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 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.

Day set on Norham’s castled steep,
And Tweed’s fair river, broad and deep,
And Cheviot’s mountains lone:
The battled towers, the donjon keep,
The loophole grates, where captives weep,
The flanking walls that round it sweep,
In yellow lustre shone.

The warriors on the turrets high,
Moving athwart the evening sky,
Seem’d forms of giant height:
Their armour, as it caught the rays,
Flash’d back again the western blaze,
In lines of dazzling light.

Saint George’s banner, broad and gay,
Now faded, as the fading ray
Less bright, and less, was flung;

The evening gale had scarce the power
To wave it on the Donjon Tower,
So heavily it hung.

The scouts had parted on their search,
The Castle gates were barr’d;
Above the gloomy portal arch,
Timing his footsteps to a march,
The Warder kept his guard;

Low humming, as he paced along,
Some ancient Border gathering-song.

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 buglehorn he blew;

The warder hasted from the wall,
And warn’d the Captain in the hall,
For well the blast he knew;

And joyfully that knight did call,
To sewer, squire, and seneschal.

‘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 unbarr’d,
Raised the portcullis’ ponderous guard,
The lofty palisade unsparr’d,
And let the drawbridge fall.

Along the bridge Lord Marmion rode,
Proudly his red-roan charger trode,
His helm hung at the saddlebow;
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 reveal’d
A token true of Bosworth field;

His eyebrow dark, and eye of fire,
Show’d 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 mustache, and curly hair,
Coal-black, and grizzled here and there,
But more through toil than age;

His square-turn’d joints, and strength of limb,
Show’d him no carpet knight so trim,
But in close fight a champion grim,
In camps a leader sage.

Well was he arm’d from head to heel,
In mail and plate of Milan steel;
But his strong helm, of mighty cost,
Was all with burnish’d gold emboss’d;

Amid the plumage of the crest,
A falcon hover’d on her nest,
With wings outspread, and forward breast;
E’en such a falcon, on his shield,
Soar’d sable in an azure field: