Marmion

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, 
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, 
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  
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;

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, 
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,         
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  
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;    
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               
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,-

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 
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.                     

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!