Marmion

Like fabled Gods, their mighty war 
Shook realms and nations in its jar; 
Beneath each banner proud to stand, 
Look’d up the noblest of the land, 
Till through the British world were known 
The names of PITT and Fox alone. 
Spells of such force no wizard grave 
E’er framed in dark Thessalian cave, 
Though his could drain the ocean dry, 
And force the planets from the sky. 
These spells are spent, and, spent with these, 
The wine of life is on the lees. 
Genius, and taste, and talent gone, 
For ever tomb’d beneath the stone, 
Where-taming thought to human pride!- 
The mighty chiefs sleep side by side. 
Drop upon Fox’s grave the tear, 
‘Twill trickle to his rival’s bier; 
O’er PITT’S the mournful requiem sound, 
And Fox’s shall the notes rebound. 
The solemn echo seems to cry,- 
‘Here let their discord with them die. 
Speak not for those a separate doom, 
Whom Fate made Brothers in the tomb; 
But search the land of living men, 
Where wilt thou find their like agen?’ 

  Rest, ardent Spirits! till the cries 
Of dying Nature bid you rise; 
Not even your Britain’s groans can pierce 
The leaden silence of your hearse; 
Then, O, how impotent and vain 
This grateful tributary strain! 
Though not unmark’d from northern clime, 
Ye heard the Border Minstrel’s rhyme: 
His Gothic harp has o’er you rung; 
The Bard you deign’d to praise, your deathless names has sung. 

  Stay yet, illusion, stay a while, 
My wilder’d fancy still beguile! 
From this high theme how can I part, 
Ere half unloaded is my heart! 
For all the tears e’er sorrow drew, 
And all the raptures fancy knew, 
And all the keener rush of blood, 
That throbs through bard in bard-like mood, 
Were here a tribute mean and low, 
Though all their mingled streams could flow- 
Woe, wonder, and sensation high, 
In one spring-tide of ecstasy!- 
It will not be-it may not last- 
The vision of enchantment’s past: 
Like frostwork in the morning ray, 
The fancied fabric melts away; 
Each Gothic arch, memorial-stone, 
And long, dim, lofty aisle, are gone; 
And, lingering last, deception dear, 
The choir’s high sounds die on my ear. 
Now slow return the lonely down, 
The silent pastures bleak and brown, 
The farm begirt with copsewood wild 
The gambols of each frolic child, 
Mixing their shrill cries with the tone 
Of Tweed’s dark waters rushing on. 

  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,