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(From Marmion)
BUT scant three miles the band had rode, | |
| When o’er a height they passed, | |
| And, sudden, close before them showed | |
| His towers, Tantallon vast; | |
| Broad, massive, high, and stretching far, | 5 |
| And held impregnable in war, | |
| On a projecting rock they rose, | |
| And round three sides the ocean flows. | |
| The fourth did battled walls enclose, | |
| And double mound and fosse. | 10 |
| By narrow drawbridge, outworks strong, | |
| Through studded gates, an entrance long, | |
| To the main court they cross. | |
| It was a wide and stately square: | |
| Around were lodgings fit and fair, | 15 |
| And towers of various form, | |
| Which on the court projected far, | |
| And broke its lines quadrangular. | |
| Here was square keep, there turret high, | |
| Or pinnacle that sought the sky, | 20 |
| Whence oft the warder could descry | |
| The gathering ocean-storm. * * * * * | |
| I said, Tantallon’s dizzy steep | |
| Hung o’er the margin of the deep. | |
| Many a rude tower and rampart there | 25 |
| Repelled the insult of the air, | |
| Which, when the tempest vexed the sky, | |
| Half breeze, half spray, came whistling by. | |
| Above the rest, a turret square | |
| Did o’er its Gothic entrance bear, | 30 |
| Of sculpture rude, a stony shield; | |
| The Bloody Heart was in the Field, | |
| And in the chief three mullets stood, | |
| The cognizance of Douglas blood. | |
| The turret held a narrow stair, | 35 |
| Which, mounted, gave you access where | |
| A parapet’s embattled row | |
| Did seaward round the castle go. | |
| Sometimes in dizzy steps descending, | |
| Sometimes in narrow circuit bending, | 40 |
| Sometimes in platform broad extending, | |
| Its varying circle did combine | |
| Bulwark, and bartisan, and line, | |
| And bastion, tower, and vantage-coign: | |
| Above the booming ocean leant | 45 |
| The far-projecting battlement; | |
| The billows burst, in ceaseless flow, | |
| Upon the precipice below. | |
| Where’er Tantallon faced the land, | |
| Gate-works and walls were strongly manned; | 50 |
| No need upon the sea-girt side; | |
| The steepy rock and frantic tide | |
| Approach of human step denied; | |
| And thus these lines and ramparts rude | |
| Were left in deepest solitude. | 55 |
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