ROKEBY.

CANTO FOURTH.

I.

WHEN Denmark's raven soar'd on high,
Triumphant through Northumbrian sky,
Till, hovering near, her fatal croak
Bade Reged's Britons dread the yoke,1

1 About the year of God 866, the Danes, under their celebrated leaders Inguar (more properly Agnar) and Hubba, sons, it is said, of the still more celebrated Regnar Lodbrog, invaded Northumberland, bringing with them the magical standard, so often mentioned in poetry, called REAFEN, or Rumfan, from its bearing the figure of a raven:

"Wrought by the sisters of the Danish king,
Of furious Ivar in a midnight hour:
While the sick moon, at their enchanted song
Wrapt in pale tempest, labour'd through the clouds,
The demons of destruction then, they say,
Were all abroad, and mixing with the woof
Their baleful power: The sisters ever sung,

'Shake, standard, shake this ruin on our foes.'"

THOMSON and MALLET'S Alfred.

The Danes renewed and extended their incursions, and

And the broad shadow of her wing
Blacken'd each cataract and spring,
Where Tees in tumult leaves his source,
Thundering o'er Caldron and High-Force; 1
Beneath the shade the Northmen came,
Fix'd on each vale a Runic name,2

began to colonize, establishing a kind of capital at York, from which they spread their conquests and incursions in every direction. Stanmore, which divides the mountains of. Westmoreland and Cumberland, was probably the boundary of the Danish kingdom in that direction. The district to the west, known in ancient British history by the name of Reged, had never been conquered by the Saxons, and continued to maintain a precarious independence until it was ceded to Malcolm, King of Scots, by William the Conqueror, probably on account of its similarity in language and manners to the neighbouring British kingdom of Strath-Clyde.

Upon the extent and duration of the Danish sovereignty in Northumberland, the curious may consult the various authorities quoted in the Gesta et Vestigia Danorum extra Daniam, tom. ii. p. 40. The most powerful of their Northumbrian leaders seems to have been Ivar, called, from the extent of his conquests, Widfam, that is, The Strider.

1 The Tees rises about the skirts of Crossfell, and falls over the cataracts named in the text before it leaves the mountains which divide the North-Riding from Cumberland. High-Force is seventy-five feet in height.

2 The heathen Danes have left several traces of their religion in the upper part of Teesdale. Balder-garth, which derives its name from the unfortunate son of Odin, is a tract of waste land on the very ridge of Stanmore; and a brook, which falls into the Tees near Barnard Castle, is named after the same deity. A field upon the banks of the Tees is also termed Woden-Croft, from the supreme deity of the Edda. Thorsgill, of which a description is attempted in stanza ii., is a beautiful little brook and dell, running up behind the ruins

Rear'd high their altar's rugged stone,
And gave their Gods the land they won.
Then, Balder, one bleak garth was thine,
And one sweet brooklet's silver line,
And Woden's Croft did title gain
From the stern Father of the Slain;
But to the Monarch of the Mace,
That held in fight the foremost place,
To Odin's son, and Sifia's spouse,
Near Stratforth high they paid their vows,
Remember'd Thor's victorious fame,
And gave the dell the Thunderer's name.

II.

Yet Scald or Kemper err'd, I ween,
Who gave that soft and quiet scene,
With all its varied light and shade,
And every little sunny glade,

And the blithe brook that strolls along
Its pebbled bed with summer song,

of Eglistone Abbey. Thor was the Hercules of the Scandinavian mythology, a dreadful giant-queller, and in that capacity the champion of the gods, and the defender of Asgard, the northern Olympus, against the frequent attacks of the inhabitants of Jotunhem. There is an old poem in the Edda of Sæmund, called the Song of Thrym, which turns upon the loss and recovery of the Mace, or Hammer, which was Thor's principal weapon, and on which much of his power seems to have depended. It may be read to great advantage in a version equally spirited and literal, among the Miscellaneous Translations and Poems of the Honourable William Herbert.

To the grim God of blood and scar,
The grisly King of Northern War.
O, better were its banks assign'd
To 'spirits of a gentler kind!

For where the thicket-groups recede,
And the rath primrose decks the mead,1
The velvet grass seems carpet meet
For the light fairies' lively feet.
Yon tufted knoll, with daisies strown,
Might make proud Oberon a throne,
While, hidden in the thicket nigh,
Puck should brood o'er his frolic sly;
And where profuse the wood-vetch clings
Round ash and elm, in verdant rings,
Its pale and azure-pencill'd flower
Should canopy Titania's bower.

III.

Here rise no cliffs the vale to shade;
But, skirting every sunny glade,
In fair variety of green

The woodland lends its sylvan screen.
Hoary, yet haughty, frowns the oak,
Its boughs by weight of ages broke;
And towers erect, in sable spire,
The pine-tree scathed by lightning fire;

1 [MS." The early primrose decks the mead, And the short velvet grass seems meet For the light fairies' frolic feet."]

The drooping ash and birch, between,
Hang their fair tresses o'er the green,
And all beneath, at random grow
Each coppice dwarf of varied show,
Or, round the stems profusely twined,
Fling summer odours on the wind.
Such varied group Urbino's hand
Round Him of Tarsus nobly plann'd,
What time he bade proud Athens own
On Mars' Mount the God Unknown!
Then gray Philosophy stood nigh,
Though bent by age, in spirit high:
There rose the scar-seam'd veteran's spear,
There Grecian Beauty bent to hear,
While Childhood at her foot was placed,
Or clung delighted to her waist.

IV.

"And rest we here," Matilda said,
And sat her in the varying shade.
"Chance-met, we well may steal an hour
To friendship due from fortune's power.
Thou, Wilfrid, ever kind, must lend
Thy counsel to thy sister-friend;
And, Redmond, thou, at my behest,
No farther urge thy desperate 'quest.
For to my care a charge is left,
Dangerous to one of aid bereft,
Wellnigh an orphan, and alone,

Captive her sire, her house o'erthrown."