I suppose what one expects from a poem as distinguished from a romance--even though the poem incorporates a story--is that it should not rest for its chief interest on the mere development of the story; but rather that the narrative should be quite subordinate to that insight into the deeper side of life and manners, in expressing which poetry has so great an advantage over prose.

Of _The Lay_ and _Marmion_ this is true; less true of _The Lady of the Lake_, and still less of _Rokeby_, or _The Lord of the Isles_, and this is why _The Lay_ and _Marmion_ seem so much superior as poems to the others.

They lean less on the interest of mere incident, more on that of romantic feeling and the great social and historic features of the day.

_Marmion_ was composed in great part in the saddle, and the stir of a charge of cavalry seems to be at the very core of it.

"For myself," said Scott, writing to a lady correspondent at a time when he was in active service as a volunteer, "I must own that to one who has, like myself, _la tete un peu exaltee_, the pomp and circumstance of war gives, for a time, a very poignant and pleasing sensation."[16] And you feel this all through _Marmion_ even more than in _The Lay_.