Until at weapon-point they close.—­ 760
They close, in clouds of smoke and dust,
With sword-sway, and with lance’s thrust;
  And such a yell was there,
Of sudden and portentous birth,
As if men fought upon the earth, 765
  And fiends in upper air;
Oh, life and death were in the shout,
Recoil and rally, charge and rout,
  And triumph and despair. 
Long look’d the anxious squires; their eye 770
Could in the darkness nought descry.

XXVI.

At length the freshening western blast
Aside the shroud of battle cast;
And, first, the ridge of mingled spears
Above the brightening cloud appears; 775
And in the smoke the pennons flew,
As in the storm the white sea-mew. 
Then mark’d they, dashing broad and far,
The broken billows of the war,
And plumed crests of chieftains brave, 780
Floating like foam upon the wave;
  But nought distinct they see: 
Wide raged the battle on the plain;
Spears shook, and falchions flash’d amain;
Fell England’s arrow-flight like rain; 785
Crests rose, and stoop’d, and rose again,
  Wild and disorderly. 
Amid the scene of tumult, high
They saw Lord Marmion’s falcon fly: 
And stainless Tunstall’s banner white, 790
And Edmund Howard’s lion bright,
Still bear them bravely in the fight;
  Although against them come,
Of gallant Gordons many a one,
And many a stubborn Badenoch-man, 795
And many a rugged Border clan,
  With Huntly, and with Home.

XXVII.

Far on the left, unseen the while,
Stanley broke Lennox and Argyle;
Though there the western mountaineer 800
Rush’d with bare bosom on the spear,
And flung the feeble targe aside,
And with both hands the broadsword plied. 
’Twas vain:—­But Fortune, on the right,
With fickle smile, cheer’d Scotland’s fight. 805
Then fell that spotless banner white,
  The Howard’s lion fell;
Yet still Lord Marmion’s falcon flew
With wavering flight, while fiercer grew
  Around the battle-yell. 810
The Border slogan rent the sky! 
A Home! a Gordon! was the cry: 
  Loud were the clanging blows;
Advanced,—­forced back,—­now low, now high,
  The pennon sunk and rose; 815
As bends the bark’s mast in the gale,
When rent are rigging, shrouds, and sail,
  It waver’d ’mid the foes. 
No longer Blount the view could bear: 
’By Heaven, and all its saints!  I swear 820
  I will not see it lost! 
Fitz-Eustace, you with Lady Clare
May bid your beads, and patter prayer,—­