Their dark impenetrable wood,
Each stepping where his comrade stood,
The instant that he fell.
No thought was there of dastard flight;
Link’d in the serried phalanx tight,
Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,
As fearlessly and well;
Till utter darkness closed her wing
O’er their thin host and wounded King....
Next came The Lady of the Lake (1810), a still greater success, but clumsy in plot and heavy with unpoetical matter. The poem made the fortune of the Trossachs. In Rokeby (1813) the scene shifts to the North of England. As a whole this poem is inferior to its predecessors, but some of the lyrics have a seriousness and depth of tone that are quite uncommon in the spur-and-feather pageantry of Scott’s verse. The Bridal of Triermain (1813) and The Lord of the Isles (1814) mark a decline in quality.