By lonely stream and silent lake;
In Deepdale's solitude to lie,
Where all is cliff, and copse, and sky;
To climb Catcastle's dizzy peak,
Or lone Pendragon's mound to seck.
Such was his wont; and there his dream
Soared on some wild fantastic theme,
Of faithful love, or ceaseless Spring,
Till Contemplation's wearied wing
The enthusiast could no more sustain,
And sad he sunk to earth again.
26. He loved- -as many a lay can tell,
Preserved in Stanmore's lonely dell;
For his was minstrel's skill, he caught
The art unteachable, untaught;
He loved his soul did nature frame
For love, and fancy nursed the flame;
Vainly he loved-for seldom swain
Of such soft mould is loved again;
Silent he loved-in every gaze
Was passion, friendship in his phrase.
So mused his life away-till died
His brethren all, their father's pride.
Wilfrid is now the only heir
Of all his stratagems and care,
And destined, darkling, to pursue
Ambition's maze by Oswald's clue.
27. Wilfrid must love and woo the bright
Matilda, heir of Rokeby's knight.
To love her was an easy hest,
The secret empress of his breast;
To woo her was a harder task
To one that durst not hope or ask.
Yet all Matilda could, she gave
In pity to her gentle slave;
Friendship, esteem, and fair regard,
And praise, the poet's best reward!
She read the tales his taste approved,
And sung the lays he framed or loved;
Yet, loth to nurse the fatal flame
Of hopeless love in friendship's name,
In kind caprice she oft withdrew
The favouring glance to friendship due,
Then grieved to see her victim's pain,
And gave the dangerous smiles again.
28. So did the suit of Wilfrid stand,
When war's loud summons waked the land.
Three banners, floating o'er the Tees,
The woe-foreboding peasant sees;
In concert oft they braved of old
The bordering Scot's incursion bold;
Frowning defiance in their pride,
Their vassals now and lords divide.
From his fair hall on Greta banks,
The Knight of Rokeby led his ranks,
To aid the valiant northern Earls
Who drew the sword for royal Charles
Mortham, by marriage near allied,
His sister had been Rokeby's bride,
Though long before the civil fray
In peaceful grave the lady lay,—
Philip of Mortham raised his band,
And marched at Fairfax's command;
While Wycliffe, bound by many a train
Of kindred art with wily Vane,
Less prompt to brave the bloody field,
Made Barnard's battlements his shield,
Secured them with his Lunedale powers,
And for the Commons held the towers.
29. The lovely heir of Rokeby's knight
Waits in the halls the event of fight;
For England's war revered the claim
Of every unprotected name,
And spared, amid its fiercest rage,
Childhood and womanhood and age.
But Wilfrid, son to Rokeby's foe,
Must the dear privilege forego,
By Greta's side, in evening gray,
To steal upon Matilda's way,
Striving, with fond hypocrisy,
For careless step and yacant eye;
Calming each anxious look and glance,
To give the meeting all to chance,
Or framing as a fair excuse,
The book, the pencil, or the muse;
Something to give, to sing, to say,
Some modern tale, some ancient lay.
Then, while the longed-for minutes last,—
Ah! minutes quickly over-passed!-
Recording each expression free
Of kind or careless courtesy,
Each friendly look, each softer tone,
As food for fancy when alone.
All this is o'er-but still, unseen,
Wilfrid may lurk in Eastwood green,
To watch Matilda's wonted round,
While springs his heart at every sound.
She comes 'tis but a passing sight,
Yet serves to cheat his weary night;
She comes not-He will wait the hour,
When her lamp lightens in the tower;
'Tis something yet, if, as she passed,
Her shade is o'er the lattice cast.
What is my life, my hope?" he said; "Alas! a transitory shade.".
30. Thus wore his life, though reason strove
For mastery in vain with love,
Forcing upon his thoughts the sum
Of present woe and ills to come,
While still he turned impatient ear
From Truth's intrusive voice severe.
Gentle, indifferent, and subdued,
In all but this, unmoved he viewed
Each outward change of ill and good:
But Wilfrid, docile, soft, and mild,
Was Fancy's spoiled and wayward child;
In her bright car she bade him ride,
With one fair form to grace his side,
Or, in some wild and lone retreat,
Flung her high spells around his seat,
Bathed in her dews his languid head,
Her fairy mantle o'er him spread;
For him her opiates gave to flow,
Which he who tastes, can ne'er forego,
And placed him in her circle, free
From every stern reality,
Till, to the Visionary, seem
Her day-dreams truth, and truth a dream.
31. Woe to the youth whom Fancy gains, Winning from Reason's hand the reins, Pity and woe! for such a mind Is soft, contemplative, and kind; And woe to those who train such youth, And spare to press the rights of truth, The mind to strengthen and anneal, While on the stithy glows the steel! O teach him, while your lessons last, To judge the present by the past; Remind him of each wish pursued, How rich it glowed with promised good; Remind him of each wish enjoyed, How soon his hopes possession cloyed! Tell him, we play unequal game, Whene'er we shoot by Fancy's aim; And, ere he strip him for her race, Show the conditions of the chase. Two Sisters by the goal are set, Cold Disappointment and Regret. One disenchants the winner's eyes, And strips of all its worth the prize; While one augments its gaudy show. More to enhance the loser's woe. The victor sees his fairy gold,
Who, for the cap of steel and iron mace,
Bear slender darts, and casques bedecked with gold, While silver-studded belts their shoulders grace Where ivory quivers ring in the broad falchion's place. 4. In the light language of an idle court,
They marmured at their master's long delay,
And held his lengthened orisons in sport :-
"What! will Don Roderick here till morning stay,
To wear in shrift and prayer the night away?
And are his hours in such dull penance passed
For fair Florinda's plundered charms to pay ?"-
Then to the east their weary eyes they cast,
And wished the lingering dawn would glimmer forth at last. 5. But, far within, Toledo's Prelate lent
An ear of fearful wonder to the King;
The silver lamp a fitful lustre sent,
So long that sad confession witnessing: For Roderick told of many a hidden thing,
Such as are lothly uttered to the air,
When Fear, Remorse, and Shame, the bosom wring,
And Guilt his secret burthen cannot bear,
And Conscience seeks in speech a respite from Despair.
6. Full on the Prelate's face, and silver hair,
The stream of failing light was feebly rolled;
But Roderick's visage, though his head was bare,
Was shadowed by his hand and mantle's fold.
While of his hidden soul the sins he told,
Proud Alaric's descendant could not brook
That mortal man his bearing should behold,
Or boast that he had seen, when conscience shook,
Fear tame a monarch's brow, remorse a warrior's look.
7. The old man's faded cheek waxed yet more pale,
As many a secret sad the king bewrayed;
And sign and glance eked out the unfinished tale,
When in the midst his faltering whisper stayed.—
"Thus royal Witiza was slain," he said;
"Yet, holy father, deem not it was I."-
Thus still Ambition strives her crimes to shade-
"O rather deem 'twas stern necessity!
Self-preservation bade, and I must kill or die.
8. "And, if Florinda's shrieks alarmed the air
If she invoked her absent sire in vain,
And on her knees implored that I would spare,
Yet, reverend priest, thy sentence rash refrain !—
All is not as it seems-the female train
Know by their bearing to disguise their mood:"
But Conscience here, as if in high disdain,
Sent to the Monarch's cheek the burning blood-
He stayed his speech abrupt-and up the Prelate stood.
Or sleeping on their mossy cell, Or quivering on the lattice bright, Or glancing on their couch, to tell How swiftly wanes the summer night! 34. He starts-a step at this lone hour! A voice!-his father seeks the tower, With haggard look and troubled sense, Fresh from his dreadful conference. “Wilfrid!—what, not to sleep addressed? Thou hast no cares to chase thy rest. Mortham has fallen on Marston-moor: Bertram brings warrant to secure His treasures, bought by spoil and blood, For the state's use and public good. The menials will thy voice obey; Let his commission have its way, In every point, in every word."Then, in a whisper,- "Take thy sword! Bertram is what I must not tell. I hear his hasty step-farewell!"
1. FAR in the chambers of the west,
The gale had sighed itself to rest;
The moon was cloudless now and clear,
But pale, and soon to disappear.
The thin gray clouds waxed dimly light
On Brusleton and Houghton height;
And the rich dale, that eastward lay,
Waited the wakening touch of day,
To give its woods and cultured plain,
And towers and spires, to light again.
But, westward, Stanmore's shapeless swell,
And Lunedale wild, and Kelton-fell,
And rock-begirdled Gilmanscar,
And Arkingarth, lay dark afar;
While, as a livelier twilight falls,
Emerge proud Barnard's bannered walls.
High crowned he sits, in dawning pale,
The sovereign of the lovely vale.
2. What prospects, from the watch-tower high, Gleam gradual on the warder's eye!
Far sweeping to the east, he sees
Down his deep woods the course of Tees,
And tracks his wanderings by the steam
Of summer vapours from the stream;
And ere he pace his destined hour
By Brackenbury's dungeon-tower,
These silver mists shall melt away,
And dew the woods with glittering spray.
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