d;
They carved at the meal
With gloves of steel,
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred."

Now, is not that a brave beginning? Does not the verse clank and chime
like sword sheath on spur, like the bits of champing horses? Then, when
William of Deloraine is sent on his lonely midnight ride across the
haunted moors and wolds, does the verse not gallop like the heavy
armoured horse?

"Unchallenged, thence passed Deloraine,
To ancient Riddell's fair domain,
Where Aill, from mountains freed,
Down from the lakes did raving come;
Each wave was crested with tawny foam,
Like the mane of a chestnut steed,
In vain! no torrent, deep or broad,
Might bar the bold moss-trooper's road;
At the first plunge the horse sunk low,
And the water broke o'er the saddle-bow."

These last two lines have the very movement and note, the deep heavy
plunge, the still swirl of the water. Well I know the lochs whence Aill
comes red in flood; many a trout have I taken in Aill, long ago. This,
of course, causes a favourable prejudice, a personal bias towards
admiration. But I think the poetry itself is good, and stirs the spirit,
even of those who know not Ailmoor, the mother of Aill, that lies dark
among the melancholy hills.

The spirit is stirred throughout by the chivalry and the courage of
Scott's men and of his women. Thus the Lady of Branksome addresses the
English invaders who have taken her boy prisoner:--

"For the young heir of Branksome's line,
God be his aid, and God be mine;
Through me no friend shall meet his doom;
Here, while I live, no foe finds room.
Then if thy Lords their purpose urge,
Take our defiance loud and high;
Our slogan is their lyke-wake dirge,
Our moat, the grave where they shall lie."

Ay, and though the minstrel says he is no love poet, and though, indeed,
he shines more in war than in lady's bower, is not this a noble stanza on
true love, and worthy of what old Malory writes in his "Mort d'Arthur"?
Because here Scott speaks for himself, and of his own unhappy and
immortal affection:--

"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 dock not die_:
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and min