The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, with memoir of the author.

72 THE LAY OF [CANTO II.
Sudden the flying jennet wheel,
And hurl the unexpected dart.
Ile knew, by the streamers that shot so bright,
That spirits were riding the northern light.
IX.
By a steel-clenched postern door,
They enter'd now the chancel tall;
The darken'd roof rose high aloof
On pillars lofty and light and small:
The keystone, that lock'd each ribbed aisle,
Was a fleur-de-lys, or a quatre-feuille;
The corbells were carved grotesque and grim;
And the pillars, with cluster'd shafts so trim,
With base and with capital flourish'd around,2
Seem'd bundles of lances which garlands had
bound.
Full many a scutcheon and banner riven,
Shook to the cold night-wind of heaven,
Around the screened altar's pale;
And there the dying lamps did burn,
Before thy low and lonely urn,
O gallant Chief of Otterburne!
1Corbells, the projections from which the arches spring,
usually cut in a fantastic face or mask.
2 [" Withplinth and with capital flourish'd around."
First Edition.]
8 The famous and desperate battle of Otterburne was fought
15th August, 1888, betwixt Henry Percy, called Hotspur,