“Their king, their lords, their mightiest low, They melted from the field, as snow, When streams are swollen and south winds blow, Dissolves in silent dew. Tweed’s echoes heard the ceaseless plash, While many a broken band, Disordered, through her currents dash, To gain the Scottish land: To town and tower, to down and dale, To tell red Flodden’s dismal tale. Tradition, legend, tune and song, Shall many an age that wail prolong; Still from the sire the son shall hear Of the stern strife, and carnage drear, Of Flodden’s fatal field, Where shivered was fair Scotland’s spear, And broken was her shield!”
In the description of this battle Scott is true to the minutest points of history, and throughout the entire poem we breathe the atmosphere of the feudal ages. His sketch of James the Fourth at Holyrood is a contribution to historical portraiture. His words seem like side-lights thrown upon the king’s character, until the chivalry and weakness of the man are presented in living embodiment.
“Old Holyrood rung merrily That night with wassail, mirth and glee; King James within her princely bower Feasted the chiefs of Scotland’s power; This feast outshone his banquets past; It was his blithest—and his last.”
The night of revelry in Edinburgh, preceding the direful battle, may have suggested to Byron the grand poetic description of the “beauty and chivalry” convened in Belgium’s capital the night before the battle of Waterloo. The tradition to which Scott alludes of the ghastly midnight proclamation at the market cross of Edinburgh, summoning the king by name, and many of his nobles and principal leaders, to appear before the tribunal of Pluto within the space of forty days, found indeed sad realization. The description of “Edinburgh after Flodden,” a poem by Robert Aytoun, completes the picture, and, in lyrical power, is not an unworthy postscript to the vigorous canto which finds its culmination in the last words of the English knight:
“When Stanley was the cry— A light on Marmion’s visage spread, And fired his glazing eye; With dying hand, above his head, He shook the fragment of his blade, And shouted ‘Victory!— Charge Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!’ Were the last words of Marmion.”