The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott ... Notes & life of the author.

128 MARPION. CANTO 1M
To thy kind judgment seemed excuse
For many an error of the muse;
Oft hast thou said, " If still mis-spent,
Thine hours to poetry are lent,
Go, and to tame thy wandering course,
Quaff from the fountain at the source;
Approach those masters, o'er whose tomb'Immortal laurels ever bloom:
Instructive of the feebler bard,
Still from the grave their voice is heard;
From them, and from the paths they show'di
Choose honoured guide and practised road;
Nor ramble on through brake and maze,
With harpers rude of barbarous days.
"Or deem'st thou not our later time
Yields topic meet for classic rhyme?
Hast thou-no elegiac verse
For Brunswick's venerable hearse?
Whatl not a line, a tear, a sigh,
When valour bleeds for liberty?Oh, hero of that glorious time,
When, with unrivalled light sublime, —
Though martial Austria, and though all
The might of Russia, and the Gaul,
Though banded Europe stood her foesThe star of Brandenburgh arose,
They couldst not live to see her beamu
For ever quenched in Jena's stream.
Lamented chiefl-it was not given
To thee to change the doom of heaven,
And crush that dragon in his birth,
Predestined scourge of guilty earth.
Lamented chief!-not thine the power,
To save in that presumptuous hour,
When Prussia hurried to the field,
And snatched the spear, but left the shield;
Valour and skill'twas thine to try,
And, tried in viain,'twas thine to die.
Ill had it seemed thy silver hair
The last, the bitterest pang to share,
For princedoms reft, and scutcheons riven,
And birthrights to usurpers given;
Thy land's, thy children's wrongs to feel,
And witness woes thou couldst not heal!
On thee relenting heaven bestows
For banoured life an honoured close;