On hills of Armenie hath been,
Where Noah's ark may yet be seen;
By that Red Sea, too, hath be trod,
Which parted at the Prophet's rod;
In Sinai's wilderness he saw

The Mount where Israel heard the law,
Mid thunder-dint, and flashing levin,
And shadows, mists, and darkness,
given.

He shows Saint James's cockle-shell,
Of fair Montserrat, too, can tell;

And of that Grot where Olives nod, Where, darling of each heart and eye, From all the youth of Sicily,

Saint Rosalie retired to God.

"To stout Saint George of Norwich merry,

Saint Thomas, too, of Canterbury,
Cuthbert of Durham and Saint Bede,
For his sins' pardon hath he prayed.
He knows the passes of the North,
And seeks far shrines beyond the Forth;
Little he eats, and long will wake,
And drinks but of the stream or lake.
This were a guide o'er moor and dale;
But when our John hath quaffed his ale,
As little as the wind that blows,
And warms itself against his nose,
Kens he, or cares, which way he goes.”—

"Gramercy!" quoth Lord Marmion,
"Full loath were I that Friar John,
That venerable man, for me
Were placed in fear or jeopardy:
If this same Palmer will me lead
From hence to Holy-Rood,

Like his good saint, I'll pay his meed,
Instead of cockle-shell or bead,

With angels fair and good.
I love such holy ramblers; still
They know to charm a weary hill
With song, romance, or lay:
Some jovial tale, or glee, or jest,
Some lying legend, at the least,
They bring to cheer the way.'
"Ah! noble sir," young Selby said,
And finger on his lip he laid,
"This man knows much, perchance e'en

more

Sometimes I thought I heard it plain,
As other voices spoke again.

I cannot tell-I like it not-
Friar John hath told us it is wrote,
No conscience clear and void of wrong
Can rest awake and pray so long.
Himself still sleeps before his beads
Have marked ten aves and two
creeds."-

"Let pass," quoth Marmion; "by my fay,

This man shall guide me on my way,
Although the great arch-fiend and he
Had sworn themselves of company.
So please you, gentle youth, to call
This Palmer to the castle-hall."
The summoned Palmer came in place:
His sable cowl o'erhung his face;
In his black mantle was he clad,
With Peter's keys, in cloth of red,

On his broad shoulders wrought;
The scallop shell his cap did deck;
The crucifix around his neck

Was from Loretto brought;
His sandals were with travel tore.
Staff, budget, bottle, scrip, he wore;
The faded palm-branch in his hand
Showed pilgrim from the Holy Land.

When as the Palmer came in hall,
Nor lord nor knight was there more tall,
Or had a statelier step withal,

Or looked more high and keen;
For no saluting did he wait,
But strode across the hall of state,
And fronted Marmion where he sate,
As he his peer had been.

But his gaunt frame was worn with

toil;

His cheek was sunk, alas the while!
And when he struggled at a smile

His eye looked haggard wild :
Poor wretch, the mother that him bare,
If she had been in presence there,
In his wan face and sunburnt hair
She had not known her child.
Danger, long travel, want, or woe,
Soon change the form that best we
know-

For deadly fear can time outgo,

And blanch at once the hair;

Hard toil can roughen form and face, And want can quench the eye's bright

grace,

Nor does old age a wrinkle trace
More deeply than despair.
Happy whom none of these befall,
But this poor Palmer knew them all.

Lord Marmion then his boon did ask;
The Palmer took on him the task,
So he would march with morning tide,
To Scottish court to be his guide.
"But I have solemn vows to pay,
And may not linger by the way,

To fair Saint Andrew's bound,
Within the ocean-cave to pray,
Where good Saint Rule his holy lay,
From midnight to the dawn of day,

Sung to the billows' sound; Thence to Saint Fillan's blessed well, Whose spring can frenzied dreams dispel And the crazed brain restore. Saint Mary grant that cave or spring Could back to peace my bosom bring, Or bid it throb no more!"

And now the midnight draught of sleep,
Where wine and spices richly steep,
In massive bowl of silver deep,

The page presents on knee.
Lord Marmion drank a fair good rest,
The Captain pledged his noble guest,
The cup went through among the rest,
Who drained it merrily;
Alone the Palmer passed it by,
Though Selby pressed him courteously.
This was a sign the feast was o'er;
It hushed the merry wassail roar,

The minstrels ceased to sound. Soon in the castle nought was heard But the slow footstep of the guard Pacing his sober round.

On rich substantial repast,

Lord Marmion's bugle blew to horse.
Then came the stirrup-cup in course:
Between the baron and his host,
No point of courtesy was lost;
High thanks were by Lord Marmion paid,
Solemn excuse the Captain made,
Till, filing from the gate, had passed
That noble train, their lord the last.
Then loudly rung the trumpet call;
Thundered the cannon from the wall,
And shook the Scottish shore ;
Around the castle eddied slow
Volumes of smoke as white as snow
And hid its turrets hoar,
Till they rolled forth upon the air,
And met the river breezes there,
Which gave again the prospect fair.

CANTO SECOND

THE CONVENT

THE breeze which swept away the smoke
Round Norham Castle rolled,
When all the loud artillery spoke
With lightning-flash and thunder-stroke,
As Marmion left the Hold.—

It curled not Tweed alone, that breeze,
For, far upon Northumbrian seas,
It freshly blew and strong,
Where, from high Whitby's cloistered
pile,

Bound to Saint Cuthbert's Holy Isle,
It bore a bark along.

Upon the gale she stooped her side,
And bounded o'er the swelling tide,

As she were dancing home;
The merry seamen laughed to see
Their gallant ship so lustily
Furrow the green sea-foam.
Much joyed they in their honored
freight;

For, on the deck, in chair of state,
The Abbess of Saint Hilda placed,
With five fair nuns, the galley graced.

"T was sweet to see these holy maids,
Like birds escaped to greenwood 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 shrieked because the sea-dog nigh
His round black head and sparkling eye
Reared o'er the foaming spray;
And one would still adjust her veil
Disordered by the summer gale,
Perchance lest some more worldly eye
Her dedicated charms might spy,
Perchance because such action graced
Her fair-turned arm and slender waist.
Light was each simple bosom there,
Save two, who ill might pleasure share,~
The Abbess and the Novice Clare.

The Abbess was of noble blood,
But early took the veil and hood,
Ere upon life 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 decked the chapel of the saint,
And gave the relic-shrine of cost,
With ivory and gems embossed.
The poor her convent's bounty blest,
The pilgrim in its halls found rest.

Black was her garb, her rigid rule
Reformed on Benedictine school ;
Her cheek was pale, her form was spare;
Vigils and penitence austere

Had early quenched 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;
Summoned 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.

Nought say I here of Sister Clare,
Save this, that she was young and fair;
As yet a novice unprofessed,
Lovely and gentle, but distressed,
She was betrothed to one now dead,
Or worse, who had dishonored 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 withered bloom.

She sate upon the galley's prow,
And seemed to mark the waves below;
Nay, seemed, so fixed 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-scorched desert, waste and bare ;
Nor waves nor breezes murmured there;
There saw she where some careless hand
O'er a dead corpse had heaped 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!

Lovely, and gentle, and distressedThese charms might tame the fiercest breast:

Harpers have sung and poets told
That he, in fury uncontrolled,
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

Prisoned in Cuthbert's islet gray.

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 marked amid her trees the hall
Of lofty Seaton-Delaval;

They saw the Blythe and Wansbeck floods

Rush to the sea through sounding woods;

They passed the tower of Widderington,
Mother of many a valiant son;
At Coquet-isle their beads they tell
To the good saint who owned the cell;
Then did the Alne attention claim,
And Warkworth, proud of Percy's

name:

And next they crossed themselves to hear

The whitening breakers sound so near, Where, boiling through the rocks, they

roar

On Dunstanborough's caverned shore; Thy tower, proud Bamborough, marked 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 reached the Holy Island's bay.

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 sandalled 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.

In Saxon strength that abbey frowned,
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 alleyed walk

To emulate in stone.

On the deep walls the heathen Dane
Had poured 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 with-
stand

Winds, waves, and northern pirates' hard.

Not but that portions of the pile,
Rebuilded in a later style,
Showed where the spoiler's hand had
been;

Not but the wasting sea-breeze keen
Had worn the pillar's carving quaint,
And mouldered 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.

Soon as they neared 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-drowned 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 maids, they bare;
And, as they caught the sounds on air,
They echoed back the hymn.
The islanders in joyous mood
Rushed emulously through the flood

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, "Fie upɔn your name!
In wrath, for loss of sylvan game,

Saint Hilda's priest ye slew.""This, on Ascension-day, each year While laboring on our harbor-pier, Must Herbert, Bruce, and Percy hear." They told how in their convent-cell A Saxon princess once did dwell, The lovely Edelfled;

And how, of thousand snakes, each one Was changed into a coil of stone

When holy Hilda prayed; Themselves, within their holy bound, Their stony folds had often found. They told how sea-fowls' pinions fail As over Whitby's towers they sail, And, sinking down, with flutterings faint,

They do their homage to the saint.

Nor did Saint Cuthbert's daughters fail
To vie with these in holy tale;
His body's resting-place, of old,
How oft their patron changed, they told;
How, when the rude Dane burned their
pile,

The monks fled forth from Holy Isle;
O'er northern mountain, marsh, and

moor,

From sea to sea, from shore to shore, Seven years Saint Cuthbert's corpse they bore.

They rested them in fair Melrose;
But though, alive, he loved it well,
Not there his relics might repose;

For, wondrous tale to tell!
In his stone coffin forth he rides,
A ponderous bark for river tides,
Yet light as gossamer it glides
Downward to Tilmouth cell.
Nor long was his abiding there,
For southward did the saint repair;
Chester-le-Street and Ripon saw
His holy corpse ere Wardilaw

Hailed him with joy and fear;
And, after many wanderings past,
He chose his lordly seat at last
Where his cathedral, huge and vast,

Looks down upon the Wear. There, deep in Durham's Gothic shade, His relics are in secret laid;

But none may know the place, Save of his holiest servants three, Deep sworn to solemn secrecy,

Who share that wondrous grace.

Who may his miracles declare?. Even Scotland's dauntless king and heir

Although with them they led Galwegians, wild as ocean's gale, And Loden's knights, all sheathed in

mail,

And the bold men of Teviotdale-
Before his standard fled.

"Twas he, to vindicate his reign,
Edged Alfred's falchion on the Dane,
And turned the Conqueror back again,
When, with his Norman bowyer band,
He came to waste Northumberland.

But fain Saint Hilda's nuns would learn
If on a rock, by Lindisfarne,
Saint Cuthbert sits, and toils to frame
The sea-born beads that bear his name:
Such tales had Whitby's fishers told,
And said they might his shape behold,
And hear his anvil sound;"

A deadened clang,-a huge dim form, Seen but, and heard, when gathering storm

And night were closing round.
But this, as tale of idle fame,
The nuns of Lindisfarne disclaim.

While round the fire such legends go,
Far different was the scene of woe
"Where, in a secret aisle beneath,
Council was held of life and death.
It was more dark and long, that vault,
Than the worst dungeon cell;

Old Colwulf built it, for his fault
In penitence to dwell,

When he for cowl and beads laid
down

The Saxon battle-axe and crown.
This den, which, chilling every sense
Of feeling, hearing, sight,
Was called the Vault of Penitence,
Excluding air and light,
Was by the prelate Sexhelm made
A place of burial for such dead
As, having died in mortal sin,
Might not be laid the church within.
'Twas now a place of punishment;
Whence if so loud a shriek were sent

As reached the upper air,

The hearers blessed themselves, and said
The spirits of the sinful dead
Bemoaned their torments there.

But though, in the monastic pile,
Did of this penitential pile,

Some vague tradition go,

Few only, save the Abbot, knew
Where the place lay, and still more few
Were those who had from him the clew
To that dread vault to go.
Victim and executioner

Were blindfold when transported there.
In low dark rounds the arches hung,
From the rude rock the side-walls sprung
The gravestones, rudely sculptured o'er,
Half sunk in earth, by time half wore,
Were all the pavement of the floor;
The mildew drops fell one by one,
With tinkling plash, upon the stone.
A cresset, in an iron chain,

Which served to light this drear domain, With damp and darkness seemed to strive,

As if it scarce might keep alive;
And yet it dimly served to show
The awful conclave met below.

There, met to doom in secrecy,

Were placed the heads of convents three,
All servants of Saint Benedict,
The statutes of whose order strict
On iron table lay;

In long black dress, on seats of stone,
Behind were these three judges shown

By the pale crescent's ray. The Abbess of Saint Hilda's there Sat for a space with visage bare, Until, to hide her bosom's swell, And tear-drops that for pity fell, She closely drew her veil; Yon shrouded figure, as I guess, By her proud mien and flowing dress,