Marmion . past:Like frostwork in the morning ray,The fancy fabric melts away;Each Gothic arch, memorial-stone,And long, dim, lofty aisle, are gone;And, lingering last, deception dear,The choirs high sonnds die on my slow return the lonely silent pastures bleak and farm begirt with copsewood wild,The gambols of each frolic their shrill cries with the toneOf Tweeds dark waters rushing on. Prompt on unequal tasks to Nature disciplines her son :Meeter, she says, for me to waste the solitary plucking from yon fen the reed,And watch i
Marmion . past:Like frostwork in the morning ray,The fancy fabric melts away;Each Gothic arch, memorial-stone,And long, dim, lofty aisle, are gone;And, lingering last, deception dear,The choirs high sonnds die on my slow return the lonely silent pastures bleak and farm begirt with copsewood wild,The gambols of each frolic their shrill cries with the toneOf Tweeds dark waters rushing on. Prompt on unequal tasks to Nature disciplines her son :Meeter, she says, for me to waste the solitary plucking from yon fen the reed,And watch it floating down the Tweed;Or idly list the shrilling which the milkmaid cheers her way,Marking its cadence rise and from the field, beneath her trips it down the uneven dale :Meeter for me, by yonder ancient shepherds tale to learn;Though oft he stop in rustic fear,Lest his old legends tire the earOf one, who, in his simple mind,May boast of book-learned taste refined. m. i- ?? ?/W; ^,»< But thou, my friend, canst fitly tell —For few have read romance so well —How still the legendary layOer poets bosom holds its sway;How on the ancient minstrel strainTime lays his palsied hand in vain;And how our hearts at doughty deeds,By warriors wrought in steely throb for fear and pitys sake;As when the Champion of the LakeEnters Morganas lated house,Or in the Chapel Perilous,Despising spells and demons converse with the unburied corse;Or when, Dame Ganores grace to move —Alas, that lawless was their love ! —He sought proud Tarquin in his freed full sixty knights; or when,A sinful man, and unconfessed,He took the SangreaFs holy quest,And slumbering saw the vision high,He might not view with waking eye. The miglitiest chiefs of British songScorned not such legends to prolong :They gleam through Spensers elfin dreamAnd mix in Miltons heavenly theme;And Dryden, in immortal strain,Had raised the Table Round again,Bu
Size: 2241px × 1115px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookidmarmion00sco, bookyear1885
