Victim and executioner Were blindfold when transported there. Which served to light this drear domain, The awful conclave met below. XIX. 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, By the pale cresset's ray. The Abbess of Saint Hilda's, there, She closely drew her veil: Is Tynemouth's haughty Prioress,' Has long been quench'd by age's night, 1 That there was an ancient priory at Tynemouth is certain. Its ruins are situated on a high rocky point; and, doubtless, many a vow was made to the shrine by the distressed mariners, who drove towards the iron-bound coast of Northumberland in stormy weather. It was anciently a nunnery; Upon whose wrinkled brow alone, The Saint of Lindisfarne. XX. Before them stood a guilty pair; But, though an equal fate they share, Yet one alone deserves our care. Her sex a page's dress belied; The cloak and doublet, loosely tied, Obscured her charms, but could not hide. Her cap down o'er her face she drew; And, on her doublet breast, She tried to hide the badge of blue, Lord Marmion's falcon crest. But, at the Prioress' command, That tied her tresses fair, for Virca, abbess of Tynemouth, presented St. Cuthbert (yet alive) with a rare winding-sheet, in emulation of a holy lady called Tuda, who had sent him a coffin: But, as in the case of Whitby, and of Holy Island, the introduction of nuns at Tynemouth, in the reign of Henry VIII., is an anachronism. The nunnery at Holy Island is altogether fictitious. Indeed, St. Cuthbert was unlikely to permit such an establishment; for, notwithstanding his accepting the mortuary gifts above mentioned, and his carrying on a visiting acquaintance with the abbess of Coldingham, he certainly hated the whole female sex; and, in revenge of a slippery trick played to him by an Irish princess, he, after death, inflicted severe penances on such as presumed to approach within a certain distance of his shrine. R And raised the bonnet from her head, And down her slender form they spread, In ringlets rich and rare. Constance de Beverley they know, Sister profess'd of Fontevraud, Whom the Church number'd with the dead, For broken vows, and convent fled. XXI. When thus her face was given to view, To those bright ringlets glistering fair,) That neither sense nor pulse she lacks, XXII. Her comrade was a sordid soul, Such as does murder for a meed; Who, but of fear, knows no control, Feels not the import of his deed ; One, whose brute-feeling ne'er aspires For them no vision'd terrors daunt, And crouch, like hound beneath the lash; XXIII. Yet well the luckless wretch might shriek, Of roots, of water, and of bread : Two haggard monks stood motionless ; The dark-red walls and arches gleam. |