THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. Walter Scott

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      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, oh, how impotent and vain

       This grateful tributary strain!

       Though not unmarked, from northern clime,

       Ye heard the Border minstrel’s rhyme

       His Gothic harp has o’er you rung;

       The bard you deigned to praise, your deathless names has sung.

      Stay yet, illusion, stay a while,

       My wildered 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 bardlike mood,

       Were here a tribute mean and low,

       Though all their mingled streams could flow -

       Woe, wonder, and sensation high,

       In one springtide 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-learned 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,

       Despising spells and demons’ force,

       Holds converse with the unburied corse;

       Or when, Dame Ganore’s grace to move,

       (Alas, that lawless was their love!)

       He sought proud Tarquin in his den,

       And freed full sixty knights; or when,

       A sinful man, and unconfessed,

       He took the Sangreal’s holy quest,

       And, slumbering, saw the vision high,

       He might not view with waking eye.

      The mightiest chiefs of British song

       Scorned not such legends to prolong:

       They gleam through Spenser’s elfin dream,

       And mix in Milton’s heavenly theme;

       And Dryden, in immortal strain,

       Had raised the Table Round again,

       But that a ribald king and court

       Bade him toil on, to make them sport;

       Demanded for their niggard pay,

       Fit for their souls, a looser lay,

       Licentious satire, song, and play;

       The world defrauded of the high design,

       Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line.

      Warmed by such names, well may we then,

       Though dwindled sons of little men,

       Essay to break a feeble lance

       In the fair fields of old romance;

       Or seek the moated castle’s cell,

       Where long through talisman and spell,

       While tyrants ruled, and damsels wept,

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