How does the meadow-flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free

Down to its root, and in that freedom bold.

If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight.

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 war, he mounts the warrior's steed;
In halls, in gay attire is seen;

In hamlets, dances on the green.

Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.

Her blue eyes sought the west afar,
For lovers love the western star.

Along thy wild and willow'd shore.

Ne'er

Was flattery lost on poet's ear;
A simple race! they waste their toil
For the vain tribute of a smile.

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
Who say that when the poet dies
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies.

Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto v. Stanza 1

True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:

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
Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd1
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd

From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down.

To the vile dust from, whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.2

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,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood;
Land of the mountain and the flood!

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,
We doubly feel ourselves alone.

"T is an old tale and often told;
But did my fate and wish agree,
Ne'er had been read, in story old,
Of maiden true betray'd for gold,

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,
Where mingles war's rattle
With groans of the dying.

Stanza 11.

Where's the coward that would not dare
To fight for such a land?

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,
The guardian Naiad of the strand.

Lady of the Lake. Canto i. Stanza 17.

And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace
A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace
Of finer form or lovelier face.

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,
A ministering angel thou!"

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
Had slightly press'd its signet sage,
Yet had not quench'd the open truth
And fiery vehemence of youth:
Forward and frolic glee was there,
The will to do, the soul to dare.

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil nor night of waking.

Hail to the chief who in triumph advances!

Some feelings are to mortals given
With less of earth in them than heaven.

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,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and forever!

Stanza 16.

The rose is fairest when 't is budding new,
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.
The rose is sweetest wash'd with morning dew,
And love is loveliest when embalm'd in tears.

Art thou a friend to Roderick ?

Come one, come all! this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I.

And the stern joy which warriors feel
In foemen worthy of their steel.

Who o'er the herd would wish to reign,
Fantastic, fickle, fierce, and vain!
Vain as the leaf upon the stream,
And fickle as a changeful dream;

Canto iv. Stanza 1.

Stanza 30.

Canto v. Stanza 10.

Ibid