So long had slept, that fickle Fame

Had blotted from her rolls their name,

And twined round some new minion's head The fading wreath for which they bled;In sooth, 'twas strange, this old man's verse Could call them from their marble hearse.

The Harper smiled, well pleased; for ne'er Was flattery lost on poet's ear:

A simple race! they waste their toil

For the vain tribute of a smile;

E'en when in age their flame expires,
Her dulcet breath can fan its fires:

Their drooping fancy wakes at praise,
And strives to trim the short-lived blaze.

Smiled then, well-pleased, the Aged Man,

And thus his tale continued ran.

THE

LAY

OF

THE LAST MINSTREL.

CANTO FIFTH.

THE

LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.

CANTO FIFTH

I.

CALL it not vain :-they do not err,

Who say, that, when the Poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies;

Who say, tall cliff, and cavern lone,

For the departed bard make moan;
That mountains weep in crystal rill;
That flowers in tears of balm distil;

Through his loved groves that breezes sigh,

And oaks, in deeper groan, reply ;

And rivers teach their rushing wave

To murmur dirges round his grave.

II.

Not that, in sooth, o'er mortal urn

Those things inanimate can mourn;
But that the stream, the wood, the gale,

Is vocal with the plaintive wail

Of those, who, else forgotten long,
Lived in the poet's faithful song,
And, with the poet's parting breath,

Whose memory feels a second death.

The maid's pale shade, who wails her lot, That love, true love, should be forgot,

From rose and hawthorn shakes the tear

Upon the gentle minstrel's bier :

The phantom knight, his glory fled,

Mourns o'er the field he heaped with dead;