Читать книгу Marmion - Вальтер Скотт - Страница 4

November’s sky is chill and drear,

November’s leaf is red and sear:

Late, gazing down the steepy linn,

That hems our little garden in,

Low in its dark and narrow glen,                            5

You scarce the rivulet might ken,

So thick the tangled greenwood grew,

So feeble trill’d the streamlet through:

Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen

Through bush and brier, no longer green,                    10

An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,

Brawls over rock and wild cascade,

And, foaming brown with double speed,

Hurries its waters to the Tweed.

No longer Autumn’s glowing red                              15

Upon our Forest hills is shed;

No more, beneath the evening beam,

Fair Tweed reflects their purple gleam;

Away hath pass’d the heather-bell

That bloom’d so rich on Needpath-fell;                      20

Sallow his brow, and russet bare

Are now the sister-heights of Yair.

The sheep, before the pinching heaven,

To sheltered dale and down are driven,

Where yet some faded herbage pines,                        25

And yet a watery sunbeam shines:

In meek despondency they eye

The withered sward and wintry sky,

And far beneath their summer hill,

Stray sadly by Glenkinnon’s rill:                          30

The shepherd shifts his mantle’s fold,

And wraps him closer from the cold;

His dogs no merry circles wheel,

But, shivering, follow at his heel;

A cowering glance they often cast,                          35

As deeper moans the gathering blast.

My imps, though hardy, bold, and wild,

As best befits the mountain child,

Feel the sad influence of the hour,

And wail the daisy’s vanish’d flower;                      40

Their summer gambols tell, and mourn,

And anxious ask, – Will spring return,

And birds and lambs again be gay,

And blossoms clothe the hawthorn spray?

  Yes, prattlers, yes.  The daisy’s flower                  45

Again shall paint your summer bower;

Again the hawthorn shall supply

The garlands you delight to tie;

The lambs upon the lea shall bound,

The wild birds carol to the round,                          50

And while you frolic light as they,

Too short shall seem the summer day.

  To mute and to material things

New life revolving summer brings;

The genial call dead Nature hears,                          55

And in her glory reappears.

But oh! my Country’s wintry state

What second spring shall renovate?

What powerful call shall bid arise

The buried warlike and the wise;                            60

The mind that thought for Britain’s weal,

The hand that grasp’d the victor steel?

The vernal sun new life bestows

Even on the meanest flower that blows;

But vainly, vainly may he shine,                            65

Where Glory weeps o’er NELSON’S shrine:

And vainly pierce the solemn gloom,

That shrouds, O PITT, thy hallow’d tomb!

  Deep graved in every British heart,

O never let those names depart!                            70

Say to your sons, – Lo, here his grave,

Who victor died on Gadite wave;

To him, as to the burning levin,

Short, bright, resistless course was given.

Where’er his country’s foes were found,                    75

Was heard the fated thunder’s sound,

Till burst the bolt on yonder shore,

Roll’d, blazed, destroyed, – and was no more.

  Nor mourn ye less his perished worth,

Who bade the conqueror go forth,                            80

And launch’d that thunderbolt of war

On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar;

Who, born to guide such high emprize,

For Britain’s weal was early wise;

Alas! to whom the Almighty gave,                            85

For Britain’s sins, an early grave!

His worth, who, in his mightiest hour,

A bauble held the pride of power,

Spum’d at the sordid lust of pelf,

And served his Albion for herself;                          90

Who, when the frantic crowd amain

Strain’d at subjection’s bursting rein,

O’er their wild mood full conquest gain’d,

The pride, he would not crush, restrain’d,

Show’d their fierce zeal a worthier cause,                  95

And brought the freeman’s arm, to aid the freeman’s laws.

  Had’st thou but lived, though stripp’d of power,

A watchman on the lonely tower,

Thy thrilling trump had roused the land,

When fraud or danger were at hand;                        100

By thee, as by the beacon-light,

Our pilots had kept course aright;

As some proud column, though alone,

Thy strength had propp’d the tottering throne:

Now is the stately column broke,                          105

The beacon-light is quench’d in smoke,

The trumpet’s silver sound is still,

The warder silent on the hill!

Oh, think, how to his latest day,

When Death, just hovering, claim’d his prey,              110

With Palinure’s unalter’d mood,

Firm at his dangerous post he stood;

Each call for needful rest repell’d,

With dying hand the rudder held,

Till, in his fall, with fateful sway,                      115

The steerage of the realm gave way!

Then, while on Britain’s thousand plains,

One unpolluted church remains,

Whose peaceful bells ne’er sent around

The bloody tocsin’s maddening sound,                      120

But still, upon the hallow’d day,

Convoke the swains to praise and pray;

While faith and civil peace are dear,

Grace this cold marble with a tear,

He, who preserved them, PITT, lies here!                  125

  Nor yet suppress the generous sigh,

Because his rival slumbers nigh;

Nor be thy requiescat dumb,

Lest it be said o’er Fox’s tomb.

For talents mourn, untimely lost,                          130

When best employ’d, and wanted most;

Mourn genius high, and lore profound,

And wit that loved to play, not wound;

And all the reasoning powers divine,

To penetrate, resolve, combine;                            135

And feelings keen, and fancy’s glow, -

They sleep with him who sleeps below:

And, if thou mourn’st they could not save

From error him who owns this grave,

Be every harsher thought suppress’d,                      140

And sacred be the last long rest.

Here, where the end of earthly things

Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings;

Where stiff the hand, and still the tongue,

Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung;                  145

Here, where the fretted aisles prolong

The distant notes of holy song,

As if some angel spoke agen,

‘All peace on earth, good-will to men;’

If ever from an English heart,                            150

O, here let prejudice depart,

And, partial feeling cast aside,

Record, that Fox a Briton died!

When Europe crouch’d to France’s yoke,

And Austria bent, and Prussia broke,                      155

And the firm Russian’s purpose brave,

Was barter’d by a timorous slave,

Even then dishonour’s peace he spurn’d,

The sullied olive-branch return’d,

Stood for his country’s glory fast,                        160

And nail’d her colours to the mast!

Heaven, to reward his firmness, gave

A portion in this honour’d grave,

And ne’er held marble in its trust

Of two such wondrous men the dust.                        165

  With more than mortal powers endow’d,

How high they soar’d above the crowd!

Theirs was no common party race,

Jostling by dark intrigue for place;

Like fabled Gods, their mighty war                        170

Shook realms and nations in its jar;

Beneath each banner proud to stand,

Look’d up the noblest of the land,

Till through the British world were known

The names of PITT and Fox alone.                          175

Spells of such force no wizard grave

E’er framed in dark Thessalian cave,

Though his could drain the ocean dry,

And force the planets from the sky.

These spells are spent, and, spent with these,            180

The wine of life is on the lees.

Genius, and taste, and talent gone,

For ever tomb’d beneath the stone,

Where-taming thought to human pride! -

The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.                      185

Drop upon Fox’s grave the tear,

‘Twill trickle to his rival’s bier;

O’er PITT’S the mournful requiem sound,

And Fox’s shall the notes rebound.

The solemn echo seems to cry, –                             190

‘Here let their discord with them die.

Speak not for those a separate doom,

Whom Fate made Brothers in the tomb;

But search the land of living men,

Where wilt thou find their like agen?’                    195

  Rest, ardent Spirits! till the cries

Of dying Nature bid you rise;

Not even your Britain’s groans can pierce

The leaden silence of your hearse;

Then, O, how impotent and vain                            200

This grateful tributary strain!

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,                        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 Valour, lion-mettled lord,

Leaning upon his own good sword.

  Well has thy fair achievement shown,                    310

A worthy meed may thus be won;

Ytene’s oaks-beneath whose shade

Their theme the merry minstrels made,

Of Ascapart, and Bevis bold,

And that Red King, who, while of old,                      315

Through Boldrewood the chase he led,

By his loved huntsman’s arrow bled-

Ytene’s oaks have heard again

Renew’d such legendary strain;

For thou hast sung, how He of Gaul,                        320

That Amadis so famed in hall,

For Oriana, foil’d in fight

The Necromancer’s felon might;

And well in modern verse hast wove

Partenopex’s mystic love;                                  325

Hear, then, attentive to my lay,

A knightly tale of Albion’s elder day.