Marmion. Вальтер СкоттЧитать онлайн книгу.

        Thy friendship thus thy judgment wronging,

      With praises not to me belonging,

      In task more meet for mightiest powers,

      Wouldst thou engage my thriftless hours.

      But say, my Erskine, hast thou weigh’d                    115

      That secret power by all obey’d,

      Which warps not less the passive mind,

      Its source conceal’d or undefined;

      Whether an impulse, that has birth

      Soon as the infant wakes on earth,                        120

      One with our feelings and our powers,

      And rather part of us than ours;

      Or whether fitlier term’d the sway

      Of habit, form’d in early day?

      Howe’er derived, its force confest                        125

      Rules with despotic sway the breast,

      And drags us on by viewless chain,

      While taste and reason plead in vain.

      Look east, and ask the Belgian why,

      Beneath Batavia’s sultry sky,                              130

      He seeks not eager to inhale

      The freshness of the mountain gale,

      Content to rear his whiten’d wall

      Beside the dank and dull canal?

      He’ll say, from youth he loved to see                      135

      The white sail gliding by the tree.

      Or see yon weatherbeaten hind,

      Whose sluggish herds before him wind,

      Whose tatter’d plaid and rugged cheek

      His northern clime and kindred speak;                      140

      Through England’s laughing meads he goes,

      And England’s wealth around him flows;

      Ask, if it would content him well,

      At ease in those gay plains to dwell,

      Where hedge-rows spread a verdant screen,                  145

      And spires and forests intervene,

      And the neat cottage peeps between?

      No! not for these will he exchange

      His dark Lochaber’s boundless range;

      Not for fair Devon’s meads forsake                        150

      Bennevis grey, and Carry’s lake.

        Thus while I ape the measure wild

      Of tales that charm’d me yet a child,

      Rude though they be, still with the chime

      Return the thoughts of early time;                        155

      And feelings, roused in life’s first day,

      Glow in the line, and prompt the lay.

      Then rise those crags, that mountain tower

      Which charm’d my fancy’s wakening hour.

      Though no broad river swept along,                        160

      To claim, perchance, heroic song;

      Though sigh’d no groves in summer gale,

      To prompt of love a softer tale;

      Though scarce a puny streamlet’s speed

      Claim’d homage from a shepherd’s reed;                    165

      Yet was poetic impulse given,

      By the green hill and clear blue heaven.

      It was a barren scene, and wild,

      Where naked cliff’s were rudely piled;

      But ever and anon between                                  170

      Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;

      And well the lonely infant knew

      Recesses where the wall-flower grew,

      And honey-suckle loved to crawl

      Up the low crag and ruin’d wall.                          175

      I deem’d such nooks the sweetest shade

      The sun in all its round survey’d;

      And still I thought that shatter’d tower

      The mightiest work of human power;

      And marvell’d as the aged hind                            180

      With some strange tale bewitch’d my mind,

      Of forayers, who, with headlong force,

      Down from that strength had spurr’d their horse,

      Their southern rapine to renew,

      Far in the distant Cheviots blue,                          185

      And, home returning, fill’d the hall

      With revel, wassel-rout, and brawl.

      Methought that still with trump and clang,

      The gateway’s broken arches rang;

      Methought grim features, seam’d with scars,                190

      Glared through the window’s rusty bars,

      And ever, by the winter hearth,

      Old tales I heard of woe or mirth,

      Of lovers’ slights, of ladies’ charms,

      Of witches’ spells, of warriors’ arms;                    195

      Of patriot battles, won of old

      By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold;

      Of later fields of feud and fight,

      When, pouring from their Highland height,

      The Scottish clans, in headlong sway,                      200

      Had swept the scarlet ranks away.

      While stretch’d at length upon the floor,

      Again I fought each combat o’er,

      Pebbles and shells, in order laid,

      The mimic ranks of war display’d;                          205

      And onward still the Scottish Lion bore,

      And still the scattered Southron fled before.

        Still, with vain fondness, could I trace,

      Anew, each kind familiar face,

      That brighten’d at our evening fire!                      210

      From the thatch’d mansion’s grey-hair’d Sire,

      Wise without learning, plain and good,

      And sprung of Scotland’s gentler blood;

      Whose eye, in age, quick, clear, and keen,

      Show’d