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 castern 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 Lindisfarne, 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 heart-broken 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-'t was 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.

110

MARMION.

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,1
Mother of many a valiant son;

At Coquet-isle their beads they tell
To the good Saint who own'd the cell;

1

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,