The proffer pleased each Scottish chief,
Though much the Ladye sage gainsay’d;
For though their hearts were brave and true,
From Jedwood’s recent sack they knew
How tardy was the Regent’s aid:
And you may guess the noble Dame
Durst not the secret prescience own,
Sprung from the art she might not name,
By which the coming help was known.
Clos’d was the compact, and agreed
That lists should be enclos’d with speed,
Beneath the castle, on a lawn:
They fix’d the morrow for the strife,
On foot, with Scottish axe and knife,
At the fourth hour from peep of dawn;
When Deloraine, from sickness freed,
Or else a champion in his stead,
Should for himself and chieftain stand
Against stout Musgrave, hand to hand.
XIV
I know right well, that, in their lay,
Full many minstrels sing and say,
Such combat should be made on horse,
On foaming steed, in full career,
With brand to aid, when as the spear
Should shiver in the course:
But he, the jovial Harper, taught
Me, yet a youth, how it was fought,
In guise which now I say;
He knew each ordinance and clause
Of Black Lord Archibald s battle-laws,
In the old Douglas’ day.
He brook’d not, he, that scoffing tongue
Should tax his minstrelsy with wrong,
Or call his song untrue:
For this, when they the goblet plied,
And such rude taunt had chaf’d his pride,
The Bard of Reull he slew.
On Teviot’s side, in fight they stood,
And tuneful hands were stain’d with blood;
Where still the thorn’s white branches wave,
Memorial o’er his rival’s grave.
XXXV
Why should I tell the rigid doom
That dragg’d my master to his tomb;
How Ousenam’s maidens tore their hair
Wept till their eyes were dead and dim
And wrung their hands for love of him
Who died at Jedwood Air?
He died! his scholars, one by one,
To the cold silent grave are gone;
And I, alas! survive alone,
To muse o’er rivalries of yore,
And grieve that I shall hear no more
The strains, with envy heard before;
For, with my minstrel brethren fled,
My jealousy of song is dead.
He paused: the listening dames again
Applaud the hoary Minstrel’s strain.
With many a word of kindly cheer,
In pity half, and half sincere,
Marvell’d the Duchess how so well
His legendary song could tell
Of ancient deeds, so long forgot;
Of feuds, whose memory was not;
Of forests, now laid waste and bare;
Of towers, which harbor now the hare;
Of manners, long since chang’d and gone;
Of chiefs, who under their grey stone
So long had slept, that fickle Fame
Had blotted from her rolls their name,
And twin’d round some new minion’s head
The fading wreath for which they bled;
In sooth,‘twas strange, this old man’s verse
Could call them from their marble hearse.
The Harper smil’d, well-pleas’d; for ne’er
Was flattery lost on poet’s ear:
A simple race! they waste their toil
For the vain tribute of a smile;
E’en when in age their flame expires,
Her dulcet breath can fan its fires:
Their drooping fancy wakes at praise,
And strives to trim the shortliv’d blaze.
Smil’d then, well pleas’d, the aged man
And thus his tale continued ran.
Canto V
I
Call it not vain; they do not err,
Who say, that when the Poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies:
Who say, tall cliff and cavern lone
For the departed Bard make moan;
That mountains weep in crystal rill;
That flowers in tears of balm distill;
Through his lov’d groves that breezes sigh,
And oaks, in deeper groan, reply;
And rivers teach their rushing wave
To murmur dirges round his grave
II
Not that, in sooth, o’er mortal urn
Those things inanimate can mourn;
But that the stream, the wood, the gale
Is vocal with the plaintive wail
Of those, who, else forgotten long,
Liv’d in the poet’s faithful song,
And with the poet’s parting breath,
Whose memory feels a second death.
The Maid’s pale shade, who wails her lot,
That love, true love, should be forgot,
From rose and hawthorn shakes the tear
Upon the gentle Minstrel’s bier:
The phantom Knight, his glory fled,
Mourns o’er the field he heap’d with dead;
Mounts the wild blast that sweeps amain,
And shrieks along the battle-plain.
The Chief, whose antique crownlet long
Still sparkled in the feudal song,
Now, from the mountain’s misty throne,
Sees, in the thanedom once his own,
His ashes undistinguish’d