WILFRID On Bertram should attend,
His son should journey with his friend.»-

XXIII.

Contempt kept Bertram's anger down,
And wreathed to savage smile his frown.
<< Wilfrid, or thou-'t is one to me,
Whichever bears the golden key.
Yet think not but I mark, and smile
To mark, thy poor and selfish wile!
If injury from me you fear,

What, Oswald, Wycliffe, shields thee here?

I've sprung from walls more high than these,
I've swam through deeper streams than Tees.
Might I not stab thee, ere one yell
Could rouse the distant sentinel?

Start not-it is not my design,
But, if it were, weak fence were thine:
And, trust me, that, in time of need,
This hand hath done more desperate deed.—
Go, haste and rouse thy slumbering son;
Time calls, and I must needs be gone.»>—

XXIV.

Nought of his sire's ungenerous part
Polluted Wilfrid's gentle heart;
A heart, too soft from early life
To hold with fortune needful strife,
His sire, while yet a hardier race
Of numerous sons were Wycliffe's grace,
On Wilfrid set contemptuous brand,
For feeble heart and forceless hand;
But a fond mother's care and joy
Were center'd in her sickly boy.
No touch of childhood's frolic mood
Show'd the elastic spring of blood;
Hour after hour he loved to pore
On Shakspeare's rich and varied lore,
But turn'd from martial scenes and light,
From Falstaff's feast and Percy's fight,
To ponder Jacques's moral strain,
And muse with Hamlet, wise in vain;
And weep himself to soft repose
O'er gentle Desdemona's woes.

XXV.

In youth, he sought not pleasures found
By youth in horse, and hawk, and hound,
But loved the quiet joys that wake
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 seek.
Such was his wont; and there his dream
Soar'd 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.

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.

XXVII.

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.

XXVIII.

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 march'd 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.

XXIX.

The lovely heir of Rokeby's knight
Waits in his halls the event of fight;
For England's war revered the claim
Of every unprotected name,
And spared, amidst 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 vacant 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 long'd-for minutes last,Ah! minutes quickly overpast!— 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!-'t is 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 past, Her shade is o'er the lattice cast.

<< What is my life, my hope?» he said: << Alas! a transitory shade.»—

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 turn'd impatient ear From Truth's intrusive voice severe. Gentle, indifferent, and subdued, In all but this, unmoved he view'd Each outward change of ill and good: But Wilfrid, docile, soft, and mild, Was Fancy's spoil'd 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, ller 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.

XXXI.

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 glow'd with promised good;
Remind him of each wish enjoy'd,
How soon his hopes possession cloy'd!
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
Transform'd, when won, to drossy mold;
But still the vanquish'd mourns his loss,
And rues, as gold, that glittering dross.
XXXII.

More wouldst thou know-yon tower survey,
Yon couch unpress'd since parting day,
Yon untrimm'd lamp, whose yellow gleam
Is mingling with the cold moon-beam,
And yon thin form!-the hectic red
On his pale cheek unequal spread;
The head reclined, the loosen'd hair,
The limbs relax'd, the mournful air.—
See, he looks up ;-a woeful smile
Lightens his woe-worn cheek awhile,-
'Tis fancy wakes some idle thought,
To gild the ruin she has wrought;
For, like the bat of Indian brakes,
Her pinions fan the wound she makes,
And soothing thus the dreamer's pain,
She drinks his life-blood from the vein.
Now to the lattice turn his
eyes,
Vain hope! to see the sun arise.
The moon with clouds is still o'ercast,
Still howls by fits the stormy blast;
Another hour must wear away,
Ere the east kindle into day,
And hark! to waste that weary hour,
He tries the minstrel's magic power.

XXXIII.
SONG.

TO THE MOON.

Hail to thy cold and clouded beam,
Pale pilgrim of the clouded sky!
Hail, though the mists that o'er thee stream
Lend to thy brow their sullen dye!
How should thy pure and peaceful eye
Untroubled view our scenes below,
Or how a tearless beam supply

To light a world of war and woe!

Fair queen! I will not blame thee now,
As once by Greta's fairy side,
Each little cloud that dimm'd thy brow
Did then an angel's beauty hide;
And of the shades I then could chide,

Still are the thoughts to memory dear,
For, while a softer strain I tried,

They hid my blush, and calm'd my fear.

Then did I swear thy ray serene
Was form'd to light some lonely dell,
By two fond lovers only seen,

Reflected from the crystal well;
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!

XXXIV.

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 addrest?
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!»

CANTO II.

I.

FAR in the chambers of the west,
The gale had sigh'd itself to rest;
The moon was cloudless now and clear,
But pale, and soon to disappear.

The thin gray clouds wax'd 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 banner'd walls.
High crown'd he sits, in dawning pale,
The sovereign of the lovely vale.

And each huge trunk that, from the side,
Reclines him o'er the darksome tide,
Where Tees, full many a fathom low,
Wears with his rage no common foe;
For pebbly bank, nor sand-bed here,
Nor clay-mound, checks his fierce career,
Condemn'd to mine a channell'd way,
O'er solid sheets of marble gray.

III.

Nor Tees alone, in dawning bright,
Shall rush upon the ravish'd sight;
But many a tributary stream,

Each from its own dark dell, shall gleam:
Staindrop, who, from her sylvan bowers,
Salutes proud Raby's battled towers;
The rural brook of Eglistone,
And Balder, named from Odin's son;
And Greta, to whose banks ere long
We lead the lovers of the song;
And silver Lune, from Stanmore wild,
And fairy Thorsgill's murmuring child;
And last and least, but loveliest still,
Romantic Deepdale's slender rill.
Who in that dim-wood glen hath stray'd,
Yet long'd for Roslin's magic glade?

Who, wandering there, hath sought to change
Even for that vale so stern and strange,
Where Cartland's crags, fantastic rent,

Through her green copse like spires are sent?

Yet, Albyn, yet the praise be thine,

Thy scenes and story to combine!
Thou bid'st him, who by Roslin strays,
List to the deeds of other days;

'Mid Cartland's crags thou show'st the cave,
The refuge of thy champion brave;
Giving each rock its storied tale,
Pouring a lay for every dale,
Knitting, as with a moral band,
Thy native legends with thy land,
To lend each scene the interest high
Which genius beams from Beauty's eye.

IV.

Bertram awaited not the sight

Which sunrise shows from Barnard's height,
But from the towers, preventing day,
With Wilfrid took his early way,

While misty dawn, and moon-beam pale,
Still mingled in the silent dale.

By Barnard's bridge of stately stone,
The southern bank of Tees they won;
Their winding path then eastward cast,
And Eglistone's gray ruins (2) past;
Each on his own deep visions bent,
Silent and sad they onward went.
Well may you think that Bertram's mood
To Wilfrid savage seem'd and rude;
Well may you think, bold Risingham
Held Wilfrid trivial, poor,
and tame;
And small the intercourse, I ween,
Such uncongenial souls between.

V.

Stern Bertram shunn'd the nearer way, Through Rokeby's park and chase that lay,

And, skirting high the valley's ridge,
They cross'd by Greta's ancient bridge,
Descending where her waters wind
Free for a space and unconfined,

As, 'scaped from Brignal's dark-wood glen,
She seeks wild Mortham's deeper den.
There, as his eye glanced o'er the mound,
Raised by that legion long renown'd,
Whose votive shrine asserts their claim,
Of pious, faithful, conquering fame, (3)
<< Stern sons of war!» sad Wilfrid sigh'd,
«Behold the boast of Roman pride!
What now of all your toils are known?
A grassy trench, a broken stone!»>-
This to himself, for moral strain
To Bertram were address'd in vain.

VI.

Of different mood, a deeper sigh
Awoke, when Rokeby's turrets high (4)
Were northward in the dawning seen
To rear them o'er the thicket green.
O then, though Spenser's self had stray'd
Beside him through the lovely glade,
Lending his rich luxuriant glow
Of fancy, all its charms to show,
Pointing the stream rejoicing free,
As captive set at liberty,

Flashing her sparkling waves abroad,
And clamouring joyful on her road;
Pointing where, up the sunny banks,
The trees retire in scatter'd ranks,
Save where, advanced before the rest,
On knoll or hillock rears his crest,
Lonely and huge, the giant oak-
As champions, when their band is broke,
Stand forth to guard the rearward post,
The bulwark of the scatter'd host-
All this, and more, might Spenser say,
Yet waste in vain his magic lay,
While Wilfrid eyed the distant tower
Whose lattice lights Matilda's bower.

VII.

The open vale is soon past o'er,
Rokeby, though nigh, is seen no more;
Sinking 'mid Greta's thickets deep,
A wild and darker course they keep,
A stern and lone, yet lovely road,
As e'er the foot of minstrel trode! (5)
Broad shadows o'er their passage fell,
Deeper and narrower grew the dell :

It seem'd some mountain, rent and riven,
A channel for the stream had given,
So high the cliffs of limestone gray
Hung beetling o'er the torrent's way,
Yielding, along their rugged base,
A flinty footpath's niggard space,

Where he, who winds 'twixt rock and wave,
May hear the headlong torrent rave,
And like a steed in frantic fit,

That flings the froth from curb and bit,
May view her chafe her waves to spray,
O'er every rock that bars her way,
Till foam-globes on her eddies ride,
Thick as the schemes of human pride,

That down life's current drive amain, As frail, as frothy, and as vain!

VIII.

The cliffs, that rear the haughty head
High o'er the river's darksome bed,
Were now all naked, wild, and gray,
Now waving all with green-wood spray;
Here trees to every crevice clung,
And o'er the dell their branches hung;
And there, all splinter'd and uneven,
The shiver'd rocks ascend to heaven.
Oft, too, the ivy swathed their breast,
And wreathed its garland round their crest,
Or from the spires bade loosely flare
Its tendrils in the middle air,
As pennons wont to wave of old,
O'er the high feast of baron bold,
When revell'd loud the feudal rout,
And the arch'd halls return'd their shout.
Such and more wild is Greta's roar,
And such the echoes from her shore,
And so the ivied banner's gleam
Waved wildly o'er the brawling stream.

IX.

Now from the stream the rocks recede,
But leave between no sunny mead,
No, nor the spot of pebbly sand,
Oft found by such a mountain strand,
Forming such warm and dry retreat,
As fancy deems the lonely seat,
Where hermit, wandering from his cell,
His rosary might love to tell.
But here, 'twixt rock and river
A dismal grove of sable yew,
With whose sad tints were mingled seen
The blighted fir's sepulchral green :
Seem'd that the trees their shadows cast
The earth that purish'd them to blast,
For never knew that swarthy grove
The verdant hue that fairies love;

grew

Nor wilding green, nor woodland flower,
Arose within its baleful bower;
The dank and sable earth receives
Its only carpet from the leaves,
That, from the withering branches cast,
Bestrew'd the ground with every blast.
Though now the sun was o'er the hill,
In this dark spot 't was twilight still,
Save that on Greta's farther side

Some straggling beams through copse-wood glide. And wild and savage contrast made

That dingle's deep and funeral shade,

With the bright tints of early day,

Which, glimmering through the ivy-spray,
On the opposing summit lay.

X.

The lated peasant shunn'd the dell,
For superstition wont to tell
Of many a grisly sound and sight,
Scaring its path at dead of night.
When Christmas logs blaze high and wide,
Such wonders speed the festal tide,

While curiosity and fear,

Pleasure and pain, sit crouching near,
Till childhood's cheek no longer glows,
And village maidens lose the rose.
The thrilling interest rises higher,
The circle closes nigh and nigher,
And shuddering glance is cast behind,
As louder moans the wintry wind.
Believe, that fitting scene was laid
For such wild tales in Mortham's glade;
For who had seen on Greta's side,
By that dim light fierce Bertram stride,
In such a spot, at such an hour,-
If touch'd by superstition's power,
Might well have deem'd that hell had given
A murderer's ghost to upper heaven,
While Wilfrid's form had seem'd to glide
Like his pale victim by his side.

XI.

Nor think to village swains alone
Are these unearthly terrors known;
For not to rank nor sex confined
Is this vain ague of the mind.
Hearts firm as steel, as marble hard,
'Gainst faith, and love, and pity barr'd,
Have quaked like aspen-leaves in May,
Beneath its universal sway.
Bertram had listed many a tale
Of wonder in his native dale,
That in his secret soul retain'd

The credence they in childhood gain'd;
Nor less his wild and venturous youth
Believed in every legend's truth,
Learn'd when beneath the tropic gale
Full swell'd the vessel's steady sail,
And the broad Indian moon her light
Pour'd on the watch of middle night,
When seamen love to hear and tell
Of portent, prodigy, and spell;
What gales are sold on Lapland's shore, (6)
How whistle rash bids tempests roar; (7)

Of witch, of mermaid, and of sprite,
Of Erick's cap and Elmo's light; (8)
Or of that Plantom Ship, whose form
Shoots like a meteor through the storm,
When the dark scud comes driving hard,
And lower'd is every topsail-yard,
And canvas, wove in earthly looms,
No more to brave the storm presumes!
Then, 'mid the war of sea and sky,
Top and top-gallant hoisted high,
Full-spread and crowded every sail,
The demon-frigate (9) braves the gale;
And well the doom'd spectators know
The harbinger of wreck and woe.

XII.

Then too were told, in stifled tone,
Marvels and omens all their own;
How, by some desert isle or key, (10)
Where Spaniards wrought their cruelty,
Or where the savage pirate's mood
Repaid it home in deeds of blood,
Strange nightly sounds of woe and fear

Appall'd the listening buccaneer,
Whose light-arm'd shallop anchor'd lay
In ambush by the lonely bay.
The groan of grief, the shriek of pain,
Ring from the moon-light groves of cane;
The fierce adventurer's heart they scare,
Who wearies memory for a prayer,
Curses the roadstead, and with gale
Of early morning lifts the sail,
To give, in thirst of blood and prey,
A legend for another bay.

Thus, as a man, a youth, a child,
Train'd in the mystic and the wild,
With this on Bertram's soul at times
Rush'd a dark feeling of his crimes;
Such to his troubled soul their form,
As the pale death-ship to the storm,
And such their omen dim and dread,
As shrieks and voices of the dead.
That pang, whose transitory force
Hover'd 'twixt horror and remorse;
That pang, perchance, his bosom press'd,
As Wilfrid sudden he address'd.

« Wilfrid, this glen is never trod
Until the sun rides high abroad;
Yet twice have I beheld to-day
A form that seem'd to dog our way;
Twice from my glance it seem'd to flee,
And shroud itself by cliff or tree;
How think'st thou?-is our path waylaid,
Or hath thy sire my trust betray'd?
If so»-Ere, starting from his dream,
That turn'd upon a gentler theme,
Wilfrid had roused him to reply,

Bertram sprung forward shouting high,
<< Whate'er thou art, thou now shalt stand!»>
And forth he darted, sword in hand.

XIV.

As bursts the levin in its wrath,

He shot him down the sounding path:
Rock, wood, and stream, rung wildly out,
To his loud step and savage shout.
Seems that the object of his race
Hath scaled the cliffs; his frantic chase
Sidelong he turns, and now 't is bent
Right up the rock's tall battlement;
Straining each sinew to ascend,

Foot, hand, and knee their aid must lend.
Wilfrid, all dizzy with dismay,

Views from beneath his dreadful way;
Now to the oak's warp'd roots he clings,
Now trusts his weight to ivy-strings;
Now, like the wild goat, must he dare
An unsupported leap in air.

Hid in the shrubby rain-course now,
You mark him by the crashing bough,
And by his corslet's sullen clank,
And by the stones spurn'd from the bank,
And by the hawk scared from her nest,
And ravens croaking o'er their guest,
Who deem his forfeit limbs shall pay
The tribute of his bold essay.