Yet never a path, from day to day,

The Pilgrim's footsteps range,

Save but the solitary way

To Burndale's ruin'd Grange.

A woeful place was that, I ween,

As sorrow could desire;

For, nodding to the fall-was each crumbling wall, And the roof was scathed with fire.

It fell upon a summer's eve,

While, on Carnethy's head,

The last faint gleams of the sun's low beams
Had streak'd the grey with red;

And the convent bell did vespers tell,

Newbattle's oaks among,

And mingled with the solemn knell

Our Ladye's evening song;

The heavy knell, the choir's faint swell,

Came slowly down the wind,

And on the Pilgrim's ear they fell,

As his wonted path he did find.

Deep sunk in thought, I ween, he was,

Until he came to that dreary place,

Which did all in ruins lie.

He gazed on the walls so scathed with fire,

And there was aware of a Grey Friar,

Resting him on a stone.

"Now, Christ thee save!" said the Grey Brother; "Some pilgrim thou seem'st to be."

But in sore amaze did Lord Albert gaze,
Nor answer again made he.

“O come ye from east, or come ye from west, Or bring reliques from over the sea,

Or come ye from the shrine of Saint James the divine,

Or Saint John of Beverley ?"

"I come not from the shrine of Saint James the divine,

Nor bring reliques from over the sea;

I bring but a curse from our father, the Pope, Which for ever will cling to me.”

"Now, woeful Pilgrim, say not so! But kneel thee down by me,

And shrive thee so clean of thy deadly sin.

That absolved thou may'st be."

"And who art thou, thou Grey Brother,

That I should shrive to thee,

When he, to whom are given the keys of earth and

heaven,

Has no power to pardon me?"

- “ O I am sent from a distant clime,
Five thousand miles away,

And all to absolve a foul, foul crime,
Done here 'twixt night and day."-

The Pilgrim kneel'd him on the sand,
And thus began his saye―

When on his neck an ice-cold hand

Did that Grey Brother laye.

NOTES

ON

THE GREY BROTHER.

From that fair dome, where suit is paid
By blast of bugle free.-P. 197. v. 3.

The barony of Pennicuik, the property of Sir George Clerk, Bart., is held by a singular tenure; the proprietor being bound to sit upon a large rocky fragment, called the Buckstane, and wind three blasts of a horn, when the king shall come to hunt on the Borough Muir, near Edinburgh. Hence, the family have adopted, as their crest, a demi-forester proper, winding a horn, with the motto, Free for a Blast. The beautiful mansion-house of Pennicuik is much admired, both on account of the architecture and surrounding scenery.

To Auchendinny's hazel glade.-P. 197. v. 3.

Auchendinny, situated upon the Eske, below Pennicuik, the present residence of the ingenious H. Mackenzie, Esq. author of The Man of Feeling, &c.