Marmion Page 6

  Each hill’s huge outline you may view;

  Shaggy with heath, but lonely bare,

  Nor tree, nor bush, nor brake, is there,

  Save where, of land, yon slender line

  Bears thwart the lake the scatter’d pine.

  Yet even this nakedness has power,

  And aids the feeling of the hour:

  Nor thicket, dell, nor copse you spy,

  Where living thing conceal’d might lie;

  Nor point, retiring, hides a dell,

  Where swain, or woodman lone, might dwell;

  There’s nothing left to fancy’s guess,

  You see that all is loneliness:

  And silence aids-though the steep hills

  Send to the lake a thousand rills;

  In summer tide, so soft they weep,

  The sound but lulls the ear asleep;

  Your horse’s hoof-tread sounds too rude,

  So stilly is the solitude.

  Nought living meets the eye or ear,

  But well I ween the dead are near;

  For though, in feudal strife, a foe

  Hath laid Our Lady’s chapel low,

  Yet still, beneath the hallow’d soil,

  The peasant rests him from his toil,

  And, dying, bids his bones be laid,

  Where erst his simple fathers pray’d.

  If age had tamed the passions’ strife,

  And fate had cut my ties to life,

  Here have I thought, ‘twere sweet to dwell,

  And rear again the chaplain’s cell,

  Like that same peaceful hermitage,

  Where Milton long’d to spend his age.

  ‘Twere sweet to mark the setting day,

  On Bourhope’s lonely top decay;

  And, as it faint and feeble died

  On the broad lake, and mountain’s side,

  To say, ‘Thus pleasures fade away;

  Youth, talents, beauty thus decay,

  And leave us dark, forlorn, and grey;’

  Then gaze on Dryhope’s ruin’d tower,

  And think on Yarrow’s faded Flower:

  And when that mountain-sound I heard,

  Which bids us be for storm prepared,

  The distant rustling of his wings,

  As up his force the Tempest brings,

  ‘Twere sweet, ere yet his terrors rave,

  To sit upon the Wizard’s grave;

  That Wizard Priest’s, whose bones are thrust,

  From company of holy dust;

  On which no sunbeam ever shines-

  (So superstition’s creed divines)-

  Thence view the lake, with sullen roar,

  Heave her broad billows to the shore;

  And mark the wild-swans mount the gale,

  Spread wide through mist their snowy sail,

  And ever stoop again, to lave

  Their bosoms on the surging wave;

  Then, when against the driving hail

  No longer might my plaid avail,

  Back to my lonely home retire,

  And light my lamp, and trim my fire;

  There ponder o’er some mystic lay,

  Till the wild tale had all its sway,

  And, in the bittern’s distant shriek,

  I heard unearthly voices speak,

  And thought the Wizard Priest was come,

  To claim again his ancient home!

  And bade my busy fancy range,

  To frame him fitting shape and strange,

  Till from the task my brow I clear’d,

  And smiled to think that I had fear’d.

  But chief, ‘twere sweet to think such life,

  (Though but escape from fortune’s strife,)

  Something most matchless good and wise,

  A great and grateful sacrifice;

  And deem each hour, to musing given,

  A step upon the road to heaven.

  Yet him, whose heart is ill at ease,

  Such peaceful solitudes displease;

  He loves to drown his bosom’s jar

  Amid the elemental war:

  And my black Palmer’s choice had been

  Some ruder and more savage scene,

  Like that which frowns round dark Loch-skene.

  There eagles scream from isle to shore;

  Down all the rocks the torrents roar;

  O’er the black waves incessant driven,

  Dark mists infect the summer heaven;

  Through the rude barriers of the lake,

  Away its hurrying waters break,

  Faster and whiter dash and curl,

  Till down yon dark abyss they hurl.

  Rises the fog-smoke white as snow,

  Thunders the viewless stream below,

  Diving, as if condemn’d to lave

  Some demon’s subterranean cave,

  Who, prison’d by enchanter’s spell,

  Shakes the dark rock with groan and yell.

  And well that Palmer’s form and mien

  Had suited with the stormy scene,

  Just on the edge, straining his ken

  To view the bottom of the den,

  Where, deep deep down, and far within,

  Toils with the rocks the roaring linn;

  Then, issuing forth one foamy wave,

  And wheeling round the Giant’s Grave,

  White as the snowy charger’s tail,

  Drives down the pass of Moffatdale.

  Marriott, thy harp, on Isis strung,

  To many a Border theme has rung:

  Then list to me, and thou shalt know

  Of this mysterious Man of Woe.

  CANTO SECOND.

  THE CONVENT.

  I.

  THE breeze, which swept away the smoke

  Round Norham Castle roll’d,

  When all the loud artillery spoke,

  With lightning-flash, and thunder-stroke,

  As Marmion left the Hold,-

  It curl’d not Tweed alone, that breeze,

  For, far upon Northumbrian seas,

  It freshly blew, and strong,

  Where, from high Whitby’s cloister’d pile,

  Bound to Saint Cuthbert’s Holy Isle,

  It bore a bark along.

  Upon the gale she stoop’d her side,

  And bounded o’er the swelling tide,

  As she were dancing home;

  The merry seamen laugh’d, to see

  Their gallant ship so lustily

  Furrow the green sea-foam.

  Much joy’d they in their honour’d freight;

  For, on the deck, in chair of state,

  The Abbess of Saint Hilda placed,

  With five fair nuns, the galley graced.

  II.

  ‘Twas sweet, to see these holy maids,

  Like birds escaped to green-wood shades,

  Their first flight from the cage,

  How timid, and how curious too,

  For all to them was strange and new,

  And all the common sights they view,

  Their wonderment engage.

  One eyed the shrouds and swelling sail,

  With many a benedicite;

  One at the rippling surge grew pale,

  And would for terror pray;

  Then shriek’d, because the seadog, nigh,

  His round black head, and sparkling eye,

  Rear’d o’er the foaming spray;

  And one would still adjust her veil,

  Disorder’d by the summer gale,

  Perchance lest some more worldly eye

  Her dedicated charms might spy;

  Perchance, because such action graced

  Her fair-turn’d arm and slender waist.

  Light was each simple bosom there,

  Save two, who ill might pleasure share,-

  The Abbess, and the Novice Clare.

  III.

  The Abbess was of noble blood,

  But early took the veil and hood,

  Ere upon li
fe she cast a look,

  Or knew the world that she forsook.

  Fair too she was, and kind had been

  As she was fair, but ne’er had seen

  For her a timid lover sigh,

  Nor knew the influence of her eye.

  Love, to her ear, was but a name,

  Combined with vanity and shame;

  Her hopes, her fears, her joys, were all

  Bounded within the cloister wall:

  The deadliest sin her mind could reach

  Was of monastic rule the breach;

  And her ambition’s highest aim

  To emulate Saint Hilda’s fame.

  For this she gave her ample dower,

  To raise the convent’s eastern tower;

  For this, with carving rare and quaint,

  She deck’d the chapel of the saint,

  And gave the relic-shrine of cost,

  With ivory and gems emboss’d.

  The poor her Convent’s bounty blest,

  The pilgrim in its halls found rest.

  IV.

  Black was her garb, her rigid rule

  Reform’d on Benedictine school;

  Her cheek was pale, her form was spare:

  Vigils, and penitence austere,

  Had early quench’d the light of youth,

  But gentle was the dame, in sooth;

  Though, vain of her religious sway,

  She loved to see her maids obey,

  Yet nothing stern was she in cell,

  And the nuns loved their Abbess well.

  Sad was this voyage to the dame;

  Summon’d to Lindisfame, she came,

  There, with Saint Cuthbert’s Abbot old,

  And Tynemouth’s Prioress, to hold

  A chapter of Saint Benedict,

  For inquisition stern and strict,

  On two apostates from the faith,

  And, if need were, to doom to death.

  V.

  Nought say I here of Sister Clare,

  Save this, that she was young and fair;

  As yet a novice unprofess’d,

  Lovely and gentle, but distress’d.

  She was betroth’d to one now dead,

  Or worse, who had dishonour’d fled.

  Her kinsmen bade her give her hand

  To one, who loved her for her land:

  Herself, almost broken-hearted now,

  Was bent to take the vestal vow,

  And shroud, within Saint Hilda’s gloom,

  Her blasted hopes and wither’d bloom.

  VI.

  She sate upon the galley’s prow,

  And seem’d to mark the waves below;

  Nay, seem’d, so fix’d her look and eye,

  To count them as they glided by.

  She saw them not-‘twas seeming all-

  Far other scene her thoughts recall,-

  A sun-scorch’d desert, waste and bare,

  Nor waves, nor breezes, murmur’d there;

  There saw she, where some careless hand

  O’er a dead corpse had heap’d the sand,

  To hide it till the jackals come,

  To tear it from the scanty tomb.-

  See what a woful look was given,

  As she raised up her eyes to heaven!

  VII.

  Lovely, and gentle, and distress’d-

  These charms might tame the fiercest breast:

  Harpers have sung, and poets told,

  That he, in fury uncontroll’d,

  The shaggy monarch of the wood,

  Before a virgin, fair and good,

  Hath pacified his savage mood.

  But passions in the human frame,

  Oft put the lion’s rage to shame:

  And jealousy, by dark intrigue,

  With sordid avarice in league,

  Had practised with their bowl and knife,

  Against the mourner’s harmless life.

  This crime was charged ‘gainst those who lay

  Prison’d in Cuthbert’s islet grey.

  VIII.

  And now the vessel skirts the strand

  Of mountainous Northumberland;

  Towns, towers, and halls, successive rise,

  And catch the nuns’ delighted eyes.

  Monk-Wearmouth soon behind them lay,

  And Tynemouth’s priory and bay;

  They mark’d, amid her trees, the hall

  Of lofty Seaton-Delaval;

  They saw the Blythe and Wansbeck floods

  Rush to the sea through sounding woods;

  They pass’d the tower of Widderington,

  Mother of many a valiant son;

  At Coquet-isle their beads they tell

  To the good Saint who own’d the cell;

  Then did the Alne attention claim,

  And Warkworth, proud of Percy’s name;

  And next, they cross’d themselves, to hear

  The whitening breakers sound so near,

  There, boiling through the rocks, they roar,

  On Dunstanborough’s cavern’d shore;

  Thy tower, proud Bamborough, mark’d they there,

  King Ida’s castle, huge and square,

  From its tall rock look grimly down,

  And on the swelling ocean frown;

  Then from the coast they bore away,

  And reach’d the Holy Island’s bay.

  IX.

  The tide did now its flood-mark gain,

  And girdled in the Saint’s domain:

  For, with the flow and ebb, its style

  Varies from continent to isle;

  Dry-shod, o’er sands, twice every day,

  The pilgrims to the shrine find way;

  Twice every day, the waves efface

  Of staves and sandall’d feet the trace.

  As to the port the galley flew,

  Higher and higher rose to view

  The Castle with its battled walls,

  The ancient Monastery’s halls,

  A solemn, huge, and dark-red pile,

  Placed on the margin of the isle.

  X.

  In Saxon strength that Abbey frown’d,

  With massive arches broad and round,

  That rose alternate, row and row,

  On ponderous columns, short and low,

  Built ere the art was known,

  By pointed aisle, and shafted stalk,

  The arcades of an alley’d walk

  To emulate in stone.

  On the deep walls, the heathen Dane

  Had pour’d his impious rage in vain;

  And needful was such strength to these,

  Exposed to the tempestuous seas,

  Scourged by the winds’ eternal sway,

  Open to rovers fierce as they,

  Which could twelve hundred years withstand

  Winds, waves, and northern pirates’ hand.

  Not but that portions of the pile,

  Rebuilded in a later style,

  Show’d where the spoiler’s hand had been;

  Not but the wasting sea-breeze keen

  Had worn the pillar’s carving quaint,

  And moulder’d in his niche the saint,

  And rounded, with consuming power,

  The pointed angles of each tower;

  Yet still entire the Abbey stood,

  Like veteran, worn, but unsubdued.

  XI.

  Soon as they near’d his turrets strong,

  The maidens raised Saint Hilda’s song,

  And with the sea-wave and the wind,

  Their voices, sweetly shrill, combined,

  And made harmonious close;

  Then, answering from the sandy shore,

  Half-drown’d amid the breakers’ roar,

  According chorus rose:

  Down to the haven of the Isle,

  The monks and nuns in order file,

  From Cuthbert’s cloisters grim;

  Banner, and cross, and relics there,

  To meet Saint Hilda’s m
aids, they bare;

  And, as they caught the sounds on air,

  They echoed back the hymn.

  The islanders, in joyous mood,

  Rush’d emulously through the flood,

  To hale the bark to land;

  Conspicuous by her veil and hood,

  Signing the cross, the Abbess stood,

  And bless’d them with her hand.

  XII.

  Suppose we now the welcome said,

  Suppose the Convent banquet made:

  All through the holy dome,

  Through cloister, aisle, and gallery,

  Wherever vestal maid might pry,

  No risk to meet unhallow’d eye,

  The stranger sisters roam:

  Till fell the evening damp with dew,

  And the sharp sea-breeze coldly blew,

  For there, even summer night is chill.

  Then, having stray’d and gazed their fill,

  They closed around the fire;

  And all, in turn, essay’d to paint

  The rival merits of their saint,

  A theme that ne’er can tire

  A holy maid; for, be it known,

  That their saint’s honour is their own.

  XIII.

  Then Whitby’s nuns exulting told,

  How to their house three Barons bold

  Must menial service do;

  While horns blow out a note of shame,

  And monks cry ‘Fye upon your name!

  In wrath, for loss of silvan game,

  Saint Hilda’s priest ye slew.’-

  ‘This, on Ascension-day, each year,

  While labouring on our harbour-pier,

  Must Herbert, Bruce, and Percy hear.’-

  They told how in their convent-cell

  A Saxon princess once did dwell,