Walter Scott - The Complete Poems of Sir Walter Scott

The palace-halls they gain.

VII

Old Holyrood rung merrily

That night with wassail, mirth, and glee:

King James within her princely bower

Feasted the chiefs of Scotland’s power,

Summoned to spend the parting hour;

For he had charged that his array

Should southward march by break of day.

Well loved that splendid monarch aye

The banquet and the song,

By day the tourney, and by night

The merry dance, traced fast and light,

The maskers quaint, the pageant bright,

The revel loud and long.

This feast outshone his banquets past:

It was his blithest—and his last.

The dazzling lamps, from gallery gay,

Cast on the Court a dancing ray;

Here to the harp did minstrels sing;

There ladies touched a softer string;

With long-eared cap and motley vest

The licensed fool retailed his jest;

His magic tricks the juggler plied;

At dice and draughts the gallants vied;

While some, in close recess apart,

Courted the ladies of their heart,

Nor courted them in vain;

For often in the parting hour

Victorious Love asserts his power

O’er coldness and disdain;

And flinty is her heart, can view

To battle march a lover true -

Can hear, perchance, his last adieu,

Nor own her share of pain.

VIII

Through this mixed crowd of glee and game,

The King to greet Lord Marmion came,

While, reverent, all made room.

An easy task it was, I trow,

King James’s manly form to know,

Although, his courtesy to show,

He doffed, to Marmion bending low,

His broidered cap and plume.

For royal was his garb and mien:

His cloak, of crimson velvet piled.

Trimmed with the fur of martin wild;

His vest of changeful satin sheen

The dazzled eye beguiled;

His gorgeous collar hung adown,

Wrought with the badge of Scotland’s crown,

The thistle brave, of old renown;

His trusty blade, Toledo right,

Descended from a baldric bright:

White were his buskins, on the heel

His spurs inlaid of gold and steel;

His bonnet, all of crimson fair,

Was buttoned with a ruby rare:

And Marmion deemed he ne’er had seen

A prince of such a noble mien.

IX

The monarch’s form was middle size:

For feat of strength or exercise

Shaped in proportion fair;

And hazel was his eagle eye,

And auburn of the darkest dye

His short curled beard and hair.

Light was his footstep in the dance,

And firm his stirrup in the lists:

And, oh! he had that merry glance

That seldom lady’s heart resists.

Lightly from fair to fair he flew,

And loved to plead, lament, and sue -

Suit lightly won and shortlived pain,

For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.

I said he joyed in banquet bower;

But, ‘mid his mirth, ‘twas often strange

How suddenly his cheer would change,

His look o’ercast and lower,

If, in a sudden turn, he felt

The pressure of his iron belt,

That bound his breast in penance pain,

In memory of his father slain.

Even so ‘twas strange how, evermore,

Soon as the passing pang was o’er

Forward he rushed, with double glee,

Into the stream of revelry:

Thus dim-seen object of affright

Startles the courser in his flight,

And half he halts, half springs aside;

But feels the quickening spur applied,

And, straining on the tightened rein,

Scours doubly swift o’er hill and plain.

X

O’er James’s heart, the courtiers say,

Sir Hugh the Heron’s wife held sway:

To Scotland’s Court she came,

To be a hostage for her lord,

Who Cessford’s gallant heart had gored,

And with the king to make accord

Had sent his lovely dame.

Nor to that lady free alone

Did the gay king allegiance own;

For the fair Queen of France

Sent him a turquoise ring and glove,

And charged him, as her knight and love,

For her to break a lance;

And strike three strokes with Scottish brand,

And march three miles on Southron land,

And bid the banners of his band

In English breezes dance.

And thus for France’s queen he drest

His manly limbs in mailed vest;

And thus admitted English fair

His inmost counsels still to share:

And thus, for both, he madly planned

The ruin of himself and land!

And yet, the sooth to tell,

Nor England’s fair, nor France’s Queen,

Were worth one pearl-drop, bright and sheen,

From Margaret’s eyes that fell,

His own Queen Margaret, who, in Lithgow’s bower,

All lonely sat, and wept the weary hour.

XI

The queen sits lone in Lithgow pile,

And weeps the weary day,

The war against her native soil,

Her monarch’s risk in battle broil;

And in gay Holyrood the while

Dame Heron rises with a smile

Upon the harp to play.

Fair was her rounded arm, as o’er

The strings her fingers flew;

And as she touched and tuned them all,

Ever her bosom’s rise and fall

Was plainer given to view;

For, all for heat, was laid aside

Her wimple, and her hood untied.

And first she pitched her voice to sing,

Then glanced her dark eye on the king,

And then around the silent ring;

And laughed, and blushed, and oft did say

Her pretty oath, By yea and nay,

She could not, would not, durst not play!

At length upon the harp with glee,

Mingled with arch simplicity,

A soft yet lively air she rung,

While thus the wily lady sung: -

XII.—LOCHINVAR

Oh! young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;

And save his good broadsword, he weapons had none,

He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone;

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone;

He swam the Esk river, where ford there was none;

But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,

The bride had consented, the gallant came late;

For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,

Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall,

Among bride’s-men, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all;

Then spoke the bride’s father, his hand on his sword -

For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word -

“Oh! come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,

Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?”

“I long wooed your daughter, my suit you denied;

Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide;

And now am I come, with this lost love of mine,

To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.

There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,

That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.”

The bride kissed the goblet: the knight took it up,

He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup.

She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,

With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.

He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar -

“Now tread we a measure!” said young Lochinvar.

So stately his form, and so lovely her face,

That never a hall such a galliard did grace;

While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,

And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume:

And the bride’smaidens whispered, “‘Twere better by far

To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.”