Whilst these things were, the mournful Clare
Did in the Dame's devotions share:
For the good Countess ceaseless pray'd
To Heaven and Saints, her sons to aid,
And, with short interval, did pass

From prayer to book, from book to mass,
And all in high Baronial pride,-
A life both dull and dignified;-

Yet as Lord Marmion nothing press'd
Upon her intervals of rest,
Dejected Clara well could bear

The formal state, the lengthen'd prayer,
Though dearest to her wounded heart
The hours that she might spend apart.

II.

I said, Tantallon's dizzy steep
Hung o'er the margin of the deep.

Many a rude tower and rampart there

Repell'd the insult of the air,

Which, when the tempest vex'd the sky,
Half breeze, half spray, came whistling by.
Above the rest, a turret square
Did o'er its Gothic entrance bear,
Of sculpture rude, a stony shield;
The Bloody Heart was in the Field,
And in the chief three mullets stood,

The cognizance of Douglas blood.
The turret held a narrow stair,

Which, mounted, gave you access where
A parapet's embattled row

Did seaward round the castle go.

Sometimes in dizzy steps