LITMIR.BIZ

      Black was her garb, her rigid rule

      Reform’d on Benedictine school;                            70

      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,                        75

      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,                          80

      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,                            85

      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 unprofess’d,

      Lovely and gentle, but distress’d.                          90

      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,                        95

      Was bent to take the vestal vow,

      And shroud, within Saint Hilda’s gloom,

      Her blasted hopes and wither’d bloom.

      She sate upon the galley’s prow,

      And seem’d to mark the waves below;                        100

      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,                    105

      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. –                         110

      See what a woful look was given,

      As she raised up her eyes to heaven!

      Lovely, and gentle, and distress’d-

      These charms might tame the fiercest breast:

      Harpers have sung, and poets told,                        115

      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,                          120

      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.                      125

      This crime was charged ‘gainst those who lay

      Prison’d in Cuthbert’s islet grey.

      And now the vessel skirts the strand

      Of mountainous Northumberland;

      Towns, towers, and halls, successive rise,                130

      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;                                  135

      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                      140

      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,                      145

      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,                      150

      And on the swelling ocean frown;

      Then from the coast they bore away,

      And reach’d the Holy Island’s bay.

      The tide did now its flood-mark gain,

      And girdled in the Saint’s domain:                        155

      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                          160

      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,                            165

      A solemn, huge, and dark-red pile,

      Placed on the margin of the isle.

      In Saxon strength that Abbey frown’d,

      With massive arches broad and round,

        That rose alternate, row and row,                        170

        On ponderous columns, short and low,

          Built ere the art was known,

        By pointed aisle, and shafted stalk,

        The arcades

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