THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. Walter Scott

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СКАЧАТЬ 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,

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