From Iran's broken diadem,

And bind her ancient faith in chains,
And the poor exile, cast alone
On foreign shores, unloved, unknown,
Beyond the Caspian's iron gates.

Or in the snowy Mossian mountains,
Far from his beauteous land of dates
Her jasmine bowers, and sunny fountains!
Yet happier so than if he trod
His own beloved but blighted sod,
Beneath a despot stranger's nod!
Oh! he would rather homeless roam
Where freedom and his God may lead,
Than be the sleekest slave at home
That crouches to the conqueror creed!
Is Iran's pride then gone forever,
Quenched with the flames in Mithra's caves?
No-she has sons that never, never,

Will stoop to be the Moslem's slaves,
While heaven has light, or earth has graves.

Spirits of fire, that brood not long,

But flash resentment back for wrong,

And hearts, where slow, but deep, the seeds
Of vengeance ripen into deeds,

Till in some treacherous hour of calm
They burst, like Zeilan's giant palm,
Whose buds fly open with a sound
That shakes the pigmy forests round.
"Yea Enir, he who scaled thy tower,
Is one of many, brave as he,

Who loathe thy haughty race and thee,
Who, tho' they know the strife is vain,
Who, tho' they know the riven chain
Snaps, but to enter in the heart
Of him who rends its links apart,
Yet dare the issue, blest to be

Even for one bleeding moment, free,

And die in pangs of liberty!

Yet here, even here, a sacred band,
Ay, in the portal of that land

Thou, Arab, dar'st to call thine own,

Their spears across thy path have thrown; Here, ere the winds half winged thee o'er, Rebellion braved thee from the shore.

And some who spurs had first braced on,

And deemed that fight should see them won? King Edward's hests obey.

De Argentine attends his side,

With stout De Valence, Pembroke's pride;
Selected champions from the train
To wait upon his bridle rein.

Upon the Scottish foe he gazed-
At once, before his sight amazed,
Sunk banner, spear and shield.
Each weapon-point is downward sent;
Each warrior to the ground is bent.

The rebels, Argentine, repent!

For pardon they have kneeled.'

'Aye, but they bend to other powers,
And other pardon seek than ours.
See where yon bare-foot Abbot stands
And blesses them with lifted hands.
Upon the spot where they have kneeled,
These men will die or win the field.'
'Then prove me, if they die or win,
Bid Gloster's earl the fight begin.'

"Earl Gilbert waved his truncheon high,
Just as the northern ranks arose,
Signal for England's archery

To halt and bend their bows.

Then stepped each yoeman forth apace,
Glanced at the intervening space,
And raised his left hand high;
To the right ear the cords they bring,
At once ten thousand bow-strings ring,
Ten thousand arrows fly!

Nor paused on the devoted Scott

The ceaseless fury of their shot.

As fiercely and as fast,

Forth whistling came the grey-goose wing,
As the wild hailstones pelt and ring
Adown December's blast.

Nor mountain targe of tough bull-hide,
Nor lowland mail, that storm may bide.
Woe! woe! to Scotland's bannered pride,
If the fell shower may last!

Scott known as a poet and gained him admiring readers everywhere. We are sure that the critics who praised it, some of them the very men who had abused Coleridge and Wordsworth, never would have seen the merit of Scott so clearly if the writings of the Lake School had not opened their minds and made them more hospitable to what was new. In that half-finished poem of Christabel, which Coleridge's mental indolence prevented him from finishing, Scott saw how effective such a meter might be made in a tale in verse, and set his Minstrel's Lay to a similar tune.

His poems followed each other quickly-Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, The Vision of Roderick, and otherstill about 1817, when he ceased to write poetry. He had found a new gift in himself, and it is as Scott the novelist that he will be known longest and best. His poetry is vigorous, always pure and wholesome like a breeze from his own Highlands. He is best in strong scenes, in battle descriptions, or in rough hand-to-hand encounters between sturdy foes. In the battle in Marmion, or in the description of the fight on the banks of Bannock, in The Lord of the Isles, which I will give you here, you get an idea of his strength in such scenes:

THE BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN.*

"Now onward and in open view,

The countless ranks of England drew;

Dark, rolling, like the ocean-tide

When the rough west hath chafed his pride,
And his deep roar sends challenge wide
To all that bars his way!

In front the gallant archers trod;
The men at arms behind them rode,
And midmost of their phalanx broad,
The monarch held his sway.
Beside him many a war-horse fumes,
Around him waves a sea of plumes,

Where many a knight in battle known,

*The battle of Bannockburn, fought June 25, 1314, between English and Scotch. English under Edward II; Scotch under Bruce.

And some who spurs had first braced on,
And deemed that fight should see them won?
King Edward's hests obey.

De Argentine attends his side,

With stout De Valence, Pembroke's pride;
Selected champions from the train
To wait upon his bridle rein.

Upon the Scottish foe he gazed—
At once, before his sight amazed,
Sunk banner, spear and shield.
Each weapon-point is downward sent;
Each warrior to the ground is bent.
'The rebels, Argentine, repent!
For pardon they have kneeled.'
'Aye, but they bend to other powers,
And other pardon seek than ours.
See where yon bare-foot Abbot stands
And blesses them with lifted hands.
Upon the spot where they have kneeled,
These men will die or win the field.'
'Then prove me, if they die or win,
Bid Gloster's earl the fight begin.'

"Earl Gilbert waved his truncheon high,
Just as the northern ranks arose,
Signal for England's archery

To halt and bend their bows.

Then stepped each yoeman forth apace,
Glanced at the intervening space,
And raised his left hand high;
To the right ear the cords they bring,
At once ten thousand bow-strings ring,
Ten thousand arrows fly!

Nor paused on the devoted Scott

The ceaseless fury of their shot.

As fiercely and as fast,

Forth whistling came the grey-goose wing,
As the wild hailstones pelt and ring
Adown December's blast.

Nor mountain targe of tough bull-hide,
Nor lowland mail, that storm may bide.
Woe! woe! to Scotland's bannered pride,
If the fell shower may last!

Fainter and fainter down the rugged dell:
And now the mountain breezes scarcely bring

A wandering witch-note of the distant spell

And now 'tis silent all! Enchantress, fare-thee-well!"

Two years after the Lay of the Last Minstrel appeared and was read with such delight, a little volume called Hours of Idleness, by George Gordon Byron, a young Born 1788. nobleman of nineteen, was reviewed in one of the Died 1824. magazines with terrible criticism. Mr. Jeffrey, the editor of the Edinburgh Review, the same critic who had lashed with his pen the poets of the Lake School, now attacked this budding poet. It is true, that the Hours of Idleness was not a collection of master-pieces of poetry, but there was enough of the promise of the genius which Byron showed afterwards, to make us feel indignant that Jeffrey could not have been more generous to the young writer. If Byron had been too sensitive to rally from the attack, his genius might have been crushed by such severity. But he was not a man to sit down in silence and take abuse, and had a strong tendency to hit back again. He answered Jeffrey in a satire in verse called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which was so strong that nobody could doubt the ability of the man who wrote it.

In this satire he was himself severe on the Lake Poets, gave Walter Scott some hard knocks, and praised Campbell, Crabbe and Rogers, as the poets of the old classic school of Pope, whom Byron fancied he thought the great poet. In spite of all this, Byron belonged by temper and genius to the new school of poets, and was much more revolutionary in temper than any of them.

In all he wrote one sees he was a child of the age in which the French Revolution had raged. The tempests in his poetry would have torn to tatters the orderly verses of Mr. Pope, or any of the others whom Byron praised so highly. After his tilt with the bards and reviewers, he went to Italy and there wrote the first part of Childe Harold—his best poem. When he went to see his London publisher, on