Marmion

Valour and skill ‘twas thine to try, 
And, tried in vain, ‘twas thine to die. 
Ill had it seem’d thy silver hair 
The last, the bitterest pang to share, 
For princedoms reft, and scutcheons riven, 
And birthrights to usurpers given;      
Thy land’s, thy children’s wrongs to feel, 
And witness woes thou could’st not heal!

On thee relenting Heaven bestows 
For honour’d life an honour’d 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 shatter’d walls, 
Which the grim Turk, besmear’d with blood, 
Against the Invincible made good;

Or that, whose thundering voice could wake 
The silence of the polar lake,                       
When stubborn Russ, and metal’d Swede, 
On the warp’d wave their death-game play’d;

Or that, where Vengeance and Affright 
Howl’d round the father of the fight, 
Who snatch’d, 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 an hundred years roll’d o’er;

When she, the bold Enchantress, came, 
With fearless hand and heart on flame!

From the pale willow snatch’d 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, 
Deem’d their own Shakspeare 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 weigh’d   
That secret power by all obey’d, 
Which warps not less the passive mind, 
Its source conceal’d 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 term’d the sway 
Of habit, form’d in early day?

Howe’er derived, its force confest 
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 whiten’d wall