Yet still, beneath the hallowed soil, 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 longed 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, And when that mountain-sound I heard, "Twere sweet, ere yet his terrors rave, That Wizard Priest's, whose bones are thrust From company of holy dust; On which no sun-beam ever shines (So superstition's creed divines,) Thence view the lake, with sullen roar, Heave her broad billows to the shore, Their bosoms on the surging wave: There ponder o'er some mystic lay, And thought the Wizard Priest was come, And bade my busy fancy range, To frame him fitting shape and strange, 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, 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 Lochskene. There eagles scream from isle to shore ; Some demon's subterranean cave, Who, prisoned 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 Where, deep deep down, and far within, Marriot, 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. K |