It's a commodus vicus of recirculation that puts pre-1923 books on my PDA, so that I am continually reading the books that my grandparents thought of as foundational, cliché, or passé, depending on their tastes for the past. Occasionally I recognize something that I first read on vacation at my grandparent's in a turn-of-the-century prize book - that is, a collection of uplifting literature in a nicer binding than children usually got, printed expressly to be a reward for school achievement. I think these survived on the upper shelves for two reasons. One, they were probably chosen for their appeal to teachers' theoretical tastes. The children who got them didn't haul them around and read them. On the other hand, they are pretty, and they were trophies. Parent and child and grown child protected them. I recognized three or four quotations from Marmion.
As an amusement in itself, as something I would recommend to a modern reader, Marmion does well. First, it has a fine plot, in broad strokes: the manly, courageous villain; the suffering hero; two lovely maidens, one something of a Villainess, one a Damsel in Distress. Battles! visions! tournament in a fairy ring! and it has great visual scene-setting.
Second, although it is entirely in verse, it's easy to read. It bangs along in simple rhyming, with a comma or stop falling naturally at the end of each line. This is unsubtle to the ear, but no barrier to comprehension.
Third, there are those several bits good enough to be still repeated out of context. One is the little song "Lochinvar", also satisfactory in plot:
For a laggard in love and a dastard in war
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.
Another is in the eulogy to Admiral Nelson:
To him, as to the burning levin,
Short, bright, resistless course was given.
Where'er his country's foes were found
Was heard the fated thunder's sound,
Till burst the bolt on yonder shore,
Roll'd, blazed, destroy'd—and was no more.
And finally, there's the bit that can be used in domestic travail, and therefore made into common quotation; I'm pretty sure 's characters use it. It's completely unfair to the character it seems to describe, who is shown with none of the faults but all these virtues:
O woman! in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!
As a historical object, Marmion isn't bad. Scott was in the wave of popularizing romantic Scotland, just as it was safely conquered¹. He commits roll-calls of the outlandish names of picturesque Scottish places. The villain is English and virile. The costume-party medieval setting, with Gothic(k) gloom, was similarly collecting its head of steam to power Victorian sentimentality and lithography.
The political introductions and the six interspersed dedications to his friends are also modestly interesting as types of early-nineteenth-century manly ideal.
The one historical fact you might want in advance is that the battle of Flodden was tremendously damaging, maybe decisively weakening, for Scotland against England. One of the editors of the poem points out that Scott was in a cavalry troop himself, and his description of the tactical stupidity of the King of Scotland is that of someone who could imagine being in that kind of battle. ( also fought on horseback, if I remember correctly, so Scott is not the last survival.)
URI: http://www.gutenberg.net/etext03/marmn10.txt
¹ Less of this, for instance:
On active steed, with lance and blade,So wrote clew in Fiction (19th c.). , Poetry. | TrackBack
The light-arm'd pricker plied his trade,--
Let nobles fight for fame;
Let vassals follow where they lead,
Burghers, to guard their townships, bleed,
But war's the Borderer's game.
Their gain, their glory, their delight,
To sleep the day, maraud the night,
O'er mountain, moss, and moor;
Joyful to fight they took their way,
Scarce caring who might win the day,
Their booty was secure.