Till they roll'd forth upon the air,1
And met the river breezes there,
Which gave again the prospect fair.

1 [MS.-"Slow they roll'd forth upon the air."]

MARMION.

INTRODUCTION TO CANTO SECOND.

TO THE

REV. JOHN MARRIOTT, A. M.'

Ashestiel, Ettrick Forest.

THE scenes are desert now,

and bare,

Where flourish'd once a forest fair,2

When these waste glens with copse were lined,
And peopled with the hart and hind.

Yon Thorn-perchance whose prickly spears
Have fenced him for three hundred years,
While fell around his green compeers-
Yon lonely Thorn, would he could tell
The changes of his parent dell,

1 | See a note to The Border Minstrelsy, vol. iv. p. 375.] 2 [See Appendix, Note F.]

8["The second epistle opens again with 'chance and change; but it cannot be denied that the mode in which it is introduced is new and poetical. The comparison of Ettrick Forest, now open and naked, with the state in which it once was-covered with wood, the favourite resort of the royal hunt, and the refuge of daring outlaws-leads the poet to imagine an ancient thorn gifted with the powers of reason,

Since he, so gray and stubborn now,
Waved in each breeze a sapling bough;
Would he could tell how deep the shade
A thousand mingled branches made;
How broad the shadows of the oak,
How clung the rowan1 to the rock,
And through the foliage show'd his head,
With narrow leaves and berries red;
What pines on every mountain sprung,
O'er every dell what birches hung,
In every breeze what aspens shook,
What alders shaded every brook!

66

Here, in my shade," methinks he'd say,

"The mighty stag at noontide lay:

The wolf I've seen, a fiercer game,

(The neighbouring dingle bears his name,)
With lurching step around me prowl,
And stop, against the moon to howl;
The mountain-boar, on battle set,
His tusks upon my stem would whet;
While doe, and roe, and red-deer good,
Have bounded by, through gay greenwood.

and relating the various scenes which it has witnessed during a period of three hundred years. A melancholy train of fancy is naturally encouraged by the idea.”—Monthly Review.]

1 Mountain-ash.

[MS.-"How broad the ash his shadows flung,
How to the rock the rowan clung."]