Walter Scott - The Complete Poems of Sir Walter Scott

Lamented chief!—not thine the power

To save in that presumptuous hour,

When Prussia hurried to the field,

And snatched the spear, but left the shield!

Valour and skill ‘twas thine to try,

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

Ill had it seemed thy silver hair

The last, the bitterest pang to share,

For princedom reft, and scutcheons riven,

And birthrights to usurpers given;

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

And witness woes thou couldst not heal!

On thee relenting Heaven bestows

For honoured life an honoured close;

And when revolves, in time’s sure change,

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.

“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

Its votaries to the shattered walls,

Which the grim Turk, besmeared with blood,

Against the invincible made good;

Or that, whose thundering voice could wake

The silence of the polar lake,

When stubborn Russ, and mettled Swede,

On the warped wave their death-game played;

Or that, where vengeance and affright

Howled round the father of the fight,

Who snatched, on Alexandria’s sand,

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

By silver Avon’s holy shore,

Till twice a hundred years rolled o’er;

When she, the bold enchantress, came,

With fearless hand and heart on flame!

From the pale willow snatched the treasure,

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,

Deemed their own Shakespeare lived again.”

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 weighed

That secret power by all obeyed,

Which warps not less the passive mind,

Its source concealed, or undefined:

Whether an impulse, that has birth

Soon as the infant wakes on earth,

One with our feelings and our powers,

And rather part of us than ours;

Or whether fitlier termed the sway

Of habit formed in early day?

Howe’er derived, its force confessed

Rules with despotic sway the breast,

And drags us on by viewless chain,

While taste and reason plead in vain.

Look east, and ask the Belgian why,

Beneath Batavia’s sultry sky,

He seeks not eager to inhale

The freshness of the mountain gale,

Content to rear his whitened wall

Beside the dank and dull canal?

He’ll say, from youth he loved to see

The white sail gliding by the tree.

Or see yon weatherbeaten hind,

Whose sluggish herds before him wind,

Whose tattered plaid and rugged cheek

His northern clime and kindred speak;

Through England’s laughing meads he goes,

And England’s wealth around him flows;

Ask, if it would content him well,

At ease in those gay plains to dwell,

Where hedgerows spread a verdant screen,

And spires and forests intervene,

And the neat cottage peeps between?

No! not for these would he exchange

His dark Lochaber’s boundless range:

Nor for fair Devon’s meads forsake

Ben Nevis grey, and Garry’s lake.

Thus while I ape the measure wild

Of tales that charmed me yet a child,

Rude though they be, still with the chime

Return the thoughts of early time;

And feelings, roused in life’s first day,

Glow in the line and prompt the lay.

Then rise those crags, that mountain tower,

Which charmed my fancy’s wakening hour.

Though no broad river swept along,

To claim, perchance, heroic song;

Though sighed no groves in summer gale,

To prompt of love a softer tale;

Though scarce a puny streamlet’s speed

Claimed homage from a shepherd’s reed;

Yet was poetic impulse given,

By the green hill and clear blue heaven.

It was a barren scene, and wild,

Where naked cliffs were rudely piled;

But ever and anon between

Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;

And well the lonely infant knew

Recesses where the wallflower grew,

And honeysuckle loved to crawl

Up the low crag and ruined wall.

I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade

The sun in all its round surveyed;

And still I thought that shattered tower

The mightiest work of human power;

And marvelled as the aged hind

With some strange tale bewitched my mind,

Of forayers, who, with headlong force,

Down from that strength had spurred their horse,

Their southern rapine to renew,

Far in the distant Cheviots blue,

And, home returning, filled the hall

With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl.

Methought that still, with trump and clang,

The gateway’s broken arches rang;

Methought grim features, seamed with scars,

Glared through the window’s rusty bars,

And ever, by the winter hearth,

Old tales I heard of woe or mirth,

Of lovers’ slights, of ladies’ charms,

Of witches’ spells, of warriors’ arms;

Of patriot battles, won of old

By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold;

Of later fields of feud and fight,

When, pouring from their Highland height,

The Scottish clans, in headlong sway,

Had swept the scarlet ranks away.

While stretched at length upon the floor,

Again I fought each combat o’er,

Pebbles and shells, in order laid,

The mimic ranks of war displayed;

And onward still the Scottish Lion bore,

And still the scattered Southron fled before.

Still, with vain fondness, could I trace,

Anew, each kind familiar face,

That brightened at our evening fire!

From the thatched mansion’s grey-haired sire,

Wise without learning, plain and good,

And sprung of Scotland’s gentler blood;

Whose eye, in age, quick, clear, and keen,

Showed what in youth its glance had been;

Whose doom discording neighbours sought,

Content with equity unbought;

To him the venerable priest,

Our frequent and familiar guest,

Whose life and manners well could paint

Alike the student and the saint;

Alas! whose speech too oft I broke

With gambol rude and timeless joke:

For I was wayward, bold, and wild,

A self-willed imp, a grandame’s child;

But, half a plague, and half a jest,

Was still endured, beloved, caressed.

For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask

The classic poet’s well-conned task?

Nay, Erskine, nay—On the wild hill

Let the wild heathbell flourish still;

Cherish the tulip, prune the vine,

But freely let the woodbine twine,

And leave untrimmed the eglantine:

Nay, my friend, nay—Since oft thy praise

Hath given fresh vigour to my lays;

Since oft thy judgment could refine

My flattened thought, or cumbrous line;

Still kind, as is thy wont, attend,

And in the minstrel spare the friend.

Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale,

Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my tale!

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