Though not unmark'd from northern clime,

Ye heard the Border Minstrel's rhyme:

His Gothic harp has o'er you rung ;

The Bard you deign'd to praise, your deathless

names has sung.

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,

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

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 frost-work 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 copse-wood 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 milk-maid 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-learn'd taste refined.

But thou, my friend, can'st 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 unconfess'd,

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 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,

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 marr'd the lofty line.

Warm'd 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,
Thy Genius, Chivalry, hath slept:
There sound the harpings of the North,
Till he awake and sally forth,