From the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” Canto III.
AND said I that my limbs were old,
And said I that my blood was cold,
And that my kindly fire was fled,
And my poor withered heart was dead,
And that I might not sing of love?—
How could I, to the dearest theme
That ever warmed a minstrel’s dream,
So foul, so false a recreant...
Lady Heron’s Song from “Marmion”
Canto V.
O, YOUNG Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And, save his good broadsword, he weapon had none,
He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
He...
Summoned from His Bride by the “Fiery Cross of Roderick Dhu”
From “The Lady of the Lake”
THE HEATH this night must be my bed,
The bracken curtain for my head,
My lullaby the warder’s tread,
Far, far from love and thee, Mary;
To-morrow eve, more stilly laid
My couch may be my bloody plaid,
My vesper song, thy wail, sweet maid!...
From “The Lady of the Lake,” Canto III.
HE is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain
When our need was the sorest.
The font, reappearing,
From the rain-drops shall borrow,
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow:
The hand of the reaper
Takes the ears that...
From “Ivanhoe”
WHEN Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out from the land of bondage came,
Her fathers’ God before her moved,
An awful guide, in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonished lands,
The cloudy pillar glided slow:
By night, Arabia’s crimsoned sands
Returned the fiery column’s glow.
There rose the choral...
Waken, lords and ladies gay,
On the mountain dawns the day;
All the jolly chase is here,
With hawk and horse and hunting-spear!
Hounds are in their couples yelling,
Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling,
Merrily, merrily mingle they,
“Waken, lords and ladies gay.”
Waken, lords and ladies gay,
The mist has left...
From “The Lady of the Lake,” Canto I.
THE STAG at eve had drunk his fill,
Where danced the moon on Monan’s rill,
And deep his midnight lair had made
In lone Glenartney’s hazel shade;
But, when the sun his beacon red
Had kindled on Benvoirlich’s head,
The deep-mouthed bloodhound’s heavy bay
Resounded up the rocky way,
And...
[In the spring of 1805, a young gentleman of talents, and of a most amiable disposition, perished by losing his way on the mountain Helvellyn. His remains were not discovered till three months afterwards, when they were found guarded by a faithful terrier, his constant attendant during frequent solitary rambles through the wilds of Cumberland and Westmoreland.]
I CLIMBED the dark...
From “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” Canto V.
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...
From “Marmion,” Canto I.
DAY set on Norham’s castled steep,
And Tweed’s fair river, broad and deep,
And Cheviot’s mountains lone:
The battled towers, the donjon keep,
The loophole grates where captives weep,
The flanking walls that round it sweep,
In yellow lustre shone.
The warriors on the turrets high,
Moving athwart...
