d to mind,
In body and in soul can bind."

Truth and faith, courage and chivalry, a free life in the hills and by
the streams, a shrewd brain, an open heart, a kind word for friend or
foeman, these are what you learn from the "Lay," if you want to learn
lessons from poetry. It is a rude legend, perhaps, as the critics said
at once, when critics were disdainful of wizard priests and ladies
magical. But it is a deathless legend, I hope; it appeals to every young
heart that is not early spoiled by low cunning, and cynicism, and love of
gain. The minstrel's own prophecy is true, and still, and always,

"Yarrow, as he rolls along,
Bears burden to the minstrel's song."

After the "Lay" came "Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field." It is far more
ambitious and complicated than the "Lay," and is not much worse written.
Sir Walter was ever a rapid and careless poet, and as he took more pains
with his plot, he took less with his verse. His friends reproved him,
but he answered to one of them--

"Since oft thy judgment could refine
My flattened thought and cumbrous line,
Still kind, as is thy wont, attend,
And in the minstrel spare the friend:
_Though wild as cloud_, _as stream_, _as gale_,
_Flow forth_, _flow unrestrained_, _my tale_!"

Any one who knows Scott's country knows how cloud and stream and gale all
sweep at once down the valley of Ettrick or of Tweed. West wind, wild
cloud, red river, they pour forth as by one impulse--forth from the far-
off hills. He let his verse sweep out in the same stormy sort, and many
a "cumbrous line," many a "flattened thought," you may note, if you will,
in "Marmion." For example--

"And think what he must next have felt,
At buckling of the falchion belt."

The "Lay" is a tale that only verse could tell; much of "Marmion" might
have been told in prose, and most of "Rokeby." But prose could never
give the picture of Edinburgh, nor tell the tale of Flodden Fight in
"Marmion," which I verily believe is the best battle-piece in all the
poetry of all time, better even than the stand of Aias by the ships in
the Iliad, better than the slaying of the Wooers in the Odyssey. Nor
could prose give us the hunting of the deer and the long gallop over
hillside and down valley, with which the "Lady of the Lake" begins,
opening thereby the enchanted gates of the Highlands to the world. "The
Lady of the Lake," except in the battle-piece, is told in a less rapid