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

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138 MArPM.oN. CANTO II.
Yet fatal strength they boast to steel
Their minds to bear the ivounds they feel;
Even while they writhe beneath the smalrt
Of civil conflict in the heart.
[For soon Lord Marmion raised his head,
And, smiling, to Fitz-Eustace said;"Is it not strange, that, as ye sung,
Seemed in mine ear a death-peal rung,
Such as in nunneries they toll
Say, what may this portend?"
Then first the Palmer silence broke,
(The livelong day he had not spoke,)
"The death ot a dear friend."
XIV.
Marmion, whose steady heart and eye
Ne'er changed in worst extremity;
Marmion, whose soul could scantly brook,
Even from his king, a haughty look;
Whose accent of command controlled
In camps the boldest of the bold —
Thought, look, and utterance, failed him now,
Fallen was his glance, and flushed his brow;
For either in the tone,
Or something in the Palmer's look,
So full upon his conscience strook,
That answer he found none.
Thus oft it haps, that when within
They shrink at sense of secret sin,
A feather daunts the brave:
A fool's wild speech confounds the fiis,I
And proudest princes vail their eyes
Before their meanest slave.
XV.
Well might he falter! —by his aid
Was Constance Beverley betrayed;
Not that he augur'd of the doom,
Which on the living closed the tomb,
But tired to hear the desperate maid
Threaten by turns, beseech, upbraid;
And wroth, because, in wild despair,
She practised on the life of Clare;
Ita fugitive the church he gave,
Though not a victim, but a slave;