He knew, by the streamers that shot so bright,

That spirits were riding the northern light.

IX.

By a steel-clenched postern door,
They entered now the chancel tall;

The darkened roof rose high aloof

On pillars, lofty, and light, and small;
The key-stone, that locked each ribbed aisle,
Was a fleur-de-lys, or a quatre-feuille;

The corbells were carved grotesque and grim;
And the pillars, with clustered shafts so trim,

With base and with capital flourished around,

Seemed bundles of lances which garlands had bound.

X.

Full many a scutcheon and banner, riven,

Shook to the cold night-wind of heaven,

* Corbells, the projections from which the arches spring, usually cut in a fantastic face, or mask.

D

Around the screened altar's pale;

And there the dying lamps did burn,

Before thy low and lonely urn,

O gallant Chief of Otterburne,

And thine, dark Knight of Liddesdale !

O fading honours of the dead!

O high ambition, lowly laid!

XI.

The moon on the east oriel shone,

Through slender shafts of shapely stone,

By foliaged tracery combined;

Thou would'st have thought some fairy's hand 'Twixt poplars straight the ozier wand,

In many a freakish knot, had twined;

Then framed a spell, when the work was done, And changed the willow wreaths to stone.

The silver light, so pale and faint,

Shewed many a prophet, and many a saint,

5

Whose image on the glass was dyed;

Full in the midst, his Cross of Red

Triumphant Michael brandished,

And trampled the Apostate's pride. The moon-beam kissed the holy pane,

And threw on the pavement a bloody stain.

XII.

They sate them down on a marble stone,
A Scottish monarch slept below;

Thus spoke the Monk, in solemn tone:-
"I was not always a man of woe;

For Paynim countries I have trod,

And fought beneath the Cross of God;

Now, strange to my eyes thine arms appear,

And their iron clang sounds strange to my ear.

XIII.

"In these far climes, it was my lot

To meet the wond'rous Michael Scott;

A wizard of such dreaded fame,

That when, in Salamanca's cave,
Him listed his magic wand to wave,

The bells would ring in Notre Dame!
Some of his skill he taught to me;

And, Warrior, I could say to thee

The words, that cleft Eildon hills in three,

And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone:

But to speak them were a deadly sin;

And for having but thought them my heart within,

A treble penance must be done.

XIV.

"When Michael lay on his dying bed,

His conscience was awakened;

He bethought him of his sinful deed,

And he gave me a sign to come with speed:

I was in Spain when the morning rose,

But I stood by his bed ere evening close.

The words may not again be said,

That he spoke to me, on death-bed laid;
They would rend this Abbaye's massy nave,

And pile it in heaps above his grave.

XV.

"I swore to bury his Mighty Book,
That never mortal might therein look;
And never to tell where it was hid,
Save at his chief of Branksome's need;
And when that need was past and o'er,
Again the volume to restore.

I buried him on St Michael's night,

When the bell tolled one, and the moon was bright;

And I dug his chamber among the dead,

When the floor of the chancel was stained red,
That his patron's Cross might over him wave,

And scare the fiends from the Wizard's grave.