LITMIR.BIZ

        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,                        210

      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-              215

      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,                        220

      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.                    225

      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                    230

      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,                                235

      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,                        240

      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,                        245

      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,)                      250

      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,                      255

      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,                                260

      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,                        265

      And freed full sixty knights; or when,

      A sinful man, and unconfess’d,

      He took the Sangreal’s holy quest,

      And, slumbering, saw the vision high,

      He might not view with waking eye.                        270

        The mightiest chiefs of British song

      Scorn’d not such legends to prolong:

      They gleam through Spenser’s elfin dream,

      And mix in Milton’s heavenly theme;

      And Dryden, in immortal strain,                            275

      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,                        280

      Licentious satire, song, and play;

      The world defrauded of the high design,

      Profaned the God-given strength, and marr’d the lofty line.

      Warm’d by such names, well may we then,

      Though dwindled sons of little men,                        285

      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,                    290

      Thy Genius, Chivalry, hath slept:

      There sound the harpings of the North,

      Till he awake and sally forth,

      On venturous quest to prick again,

      In all his arms, with all his train,                      295

      Shield, lance, and brand, and plume, and scarf,

      Fay, giant, dragon, squire, and dwarf,

      And wizard with his wand of might,

      And errant maid on palfrey white.

      Around the Genius weave their spells,                      300

      Pure Love, who scarce his passion tells;

      Mystery, half veil’d and half reveal’d;

      And Honour, with his spotless shield;

      Attention, with fix’d eye; and Fear,

      That loves the tale she shrinks to hear;                  305

      And gentle Courtesy; and Faith,

      Unchanged by sufferings, time, or death;

      And

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