Quotes
Quotes - Scott
Such is the custom of Branksome Hall.
If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight.
O fading honours of the dead!
O high ambition, lowly laid!
I was not always a man of woe.
I cannot tell how the truth may be;
I say the tale as 't was said to me.
In peace, Love tunes the shepherd's reed;
In war, he mounts the warrior's steed;
In halls, in gay attire is seen;
In hamlets, dances on the green.
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
Her blue eyes sought the west afar,
For lovers love the western star.
Along thy wild and willow'd shore.
Ne'er
Was flattery lost on poet's ear;
A simple race! they waste their toil
For the vain tribute of a smile.
Call it not vain: they do not err
Who say that when the poet dies
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies.
True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes soon as granted fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,--
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.
O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood;
Land of the mountain and the flood!
Profan'd the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line.
Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth,
When thought is speech, and speech is truth.
When, musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone.
'T is an old tale and often told;
But did my fate and wish agree,
Ne'er had been read, in story old,
Of maiden true betray'd for gold,
That loved, or was avenged, like me.
When Prussia hurried to the field,
And snatch'd the spear, but left the shield.
In the lost battle,
Borne down by the flying,
Where mingles war's rattle
With groans of the dying.
Where's the coward that would not dare
To fight for such a land?
Lightly from fair to fair he flew,
And loved to plead, lament, and sue;
Suit lightly won, and short-lived pain,
For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.
With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
But woe awaits a country when
She sees the tears of bearded men.
And dar'st thou then
To beard the lion in his den,
The Douglas in his hall?
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
