How does the meadow-flower its bloom unfold? Down to its root, and in that freedom bold. If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright, Canto ii. Stanza 1. O fading honours of the dead! O high ambition, lowly laid! I was not always a man of woe. I cannot tell how the truth may be; I say the tale as 't was said to me. In peace, Love tunes the shepherd's reed; In hamlets, dances on the green. Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, Her blue eyes sought the west afar, Along thy wild and willow'd shore. Ne'er Was flattery lost on poet's ear; Stanza 10. Stanza 12. Stanza 22. Canto iii. Stanza 1. Stanza 24. Canto iv. Stanza 1. Stanza 35 Call it not vain: they do not err Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto v. Stanza 1 True love's the gift which God has given It is not fantasy's hot fire, Whose wishes soon as granted fly; It liveth not in fierce desire, With dead desire it doth not die; It is the secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart and mind to mind In body and in soul can bind. Stanza 13. Breathes there the man with soul so dead This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd1 From wandering on a foreign strand? To the vile dust from, whence he sprung, Canto vi. Stanza 1. 1 Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way? Luke xxiv. 32. Hath not thy heart within thee burned At evening's calm and holy hour? 2 See Pope, page 341. S. G. BULFINCH: The Voice of God in the Garden. O Caledonia! stern and wild, Land of brown heath and shaggy wood; Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto vi. Stanza 2. Profan'd the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line. Marmion. Introduction to Canto i. Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech, and speech is truth. When, musing on companions gone, "T is an old tale and often told; That loved, or was avenged, like me. When Prussia hurried to the field, Introduction to Canto ii. Ibid. And snatch'd the spear, but left the shield.1 In the lost battle, Stanza 27. Introduction to Canto it. Borne down by the flying, Stanza 11. Where's the coward that would not dare Canto iv. Stanza 30. Lightly from fair to fair he flew, And loved to plead, lament, and sue; Suit lightly won, and short-lived pain, For monarchs seldom sigh in vain. Canto v. Stanza 9. With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.2 Stanza 12. But woe awaits a country when She sees the tears of bearded men. Stanza 16 1 See Freneau, page 443. 2 Reproof on her lips, but a smile in her eye. - LOVER: Rory O'More. "Charge, Chester, charge! on, Stanley, on!" Were the last words of Marmion. Stanza 32. Oh for a blast of that dread horn 2 On Fontarabian echoes borne! Stanza 33. To all, to each, a fair good-night, And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light. L'Envoy. To the Reader. In listening mood she seemed to stand, Lady of the Lake. Canto i. Stanza 17. And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace 1 See Shakespeare, page 144. Stanza 18. Scott, writing to Southey in 1810, said: "A witty rogue the other day, who sent me a letter signed Detector, proved me guilty of stealing a passage from one of Vida's Latin poems, which I had never seen or heard of." The passage alleged to be stolen ends with, When pain and anguish wring the brow, which in Vida "ad Eranen," El. ii. v. 21, ran, "Cum dolor atque supercilio gravis imminet angor, Fungeris angelico sola ministerio." "It is almost needless to add," says Mr. Lockhart, "there are no such lines." Life of Scott, vol. iii. p. 294. (American edition.) 2 Oh for the voice of that wild horn! - Rob Roy, chap. ii. A foot more light, a step more true, Ne'er from the heath-flower dash'd the dew. Lady of the Lake. Canto i. Stanza 18 On his bold visage middle age Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking, Hail to the chief who in triumph advances! Some feelings are to mortals given Time rolls his ceaseless course. Like the dew on the mountain, Stanza 21. Stanza 31. Canto ii. Stanza 19. Stanza 22. Canto iii. Stanza 1. Like the foam on the river, Stanza 16. The rose is fairest when 't is budding new, Art thou a friend to Roderick ? Come one, come all! this rock shall fly And the stern joy which warriors feel Who o'er the herd would wish to reign, Canto iv. Stanza 1. Stanza 30. Canto v. Stanza 10. Ibid |