Page:Marmion - Walter Scott (ed. Bayne, 1889).pdf/141

When such the country cheer, I come,
Well pleased, to seek our city home;
For converse, and for books, to change
30The Forest's melancholy range,
And welcome, with renew'd delight,
The busy day and social night.

 Not here need my desponding rhyme
Lament the ravages of time,
35As erst by Newark's riven towers,
And Ettrick stripp'd of forest bowers.
True,—Caledonia's Queen is changed,
Since on her dusky summit ranged,
Within its steepy limits pent,
40By bulwark, line, and battlement,
And flanking towers, and laky flood,
Guarded and garrison'd she stood,
Denying entrance or resort,
Save at each tall embattled port;
45Above whose arch, suspended, hung
Portcullis spiked with iron prong.
That long is gone,—but not so long,
Since, early closed, and opening late,
Jealous revolved the studded gate,
50Whose task, from eve to morning tide,
A wicket churlishly supplied.
Stern then, and steel-girt was thy brow,
Dun-Edin! O, how altered now,
When safe amid thy mountain court
55Thou sitt'st, like Empress at her sport,
And liberal, unconfined, and free,
Flinging thy white arms to the sea,
For thy dark cloud, with umber'd lower,
That hung o'er cliff, and lake, and tower,
60Thou gleam'st against the western ray
Ten thousand lines of brighter day.

 Not she, the Championess of old,
In Spenser's magic tale enroll'd,