There, with Saint Cuthbert's Abbot old, And Tynemouth's Prioress, to hold A chapter of Saint Benedict, For inquisition stern and strict, On two apostates from the faith, And, if need were, to doom to death. V. Nought say I here of Sister Clare, Save this, that she was young and fair; As yet a novice unprofessed, Lovely, and gentle, but distressed. She was betrothed to one now dead, Was bent to take the vestal vow, And shroud, within Saint Hilda's gloom, VI. She sate upon the galley's prow, And seemed to mark the waves below ; She saw them not-'twas seeming all- See what a woeful look was given, As she raised up her eyes to heaven! VII. Lovely, and gentle, and distressed— These charms might tame the fiercest breast: Harpers have sung, and poets told, That he, in fury uncontrouled, The shaggy monarch of the wood, With sordid avarice in league, Had practised, with their bowl and knife, Against the mourner's harmless life. This crime was charged 'gainst those who lay Prisoned in Cuthbert's islet gray. VIII. And now the vessel skirts the strand Of mountainous Northumberland; Towns, towers, and halls, successive rise, And catch the nuns' delighted eyes. Monk-Wearmouth soon behind them lay, And Tynemouth's priory and bay; They marked, amid her trees, the hall They saw the Blythe and Wansbeck floods Mother of many a valiant son; At Coquet-isle their beads they tell, To the good Saint who owned the cell; And Warkworth, proud of Percy's name; And next, they crossed themselves, to hear The whitening breakers sound so near, Where, boiling through the rocks, they roar On Dunstanborough's caverned shore; Thy tower, proud Bamborough, marked they here, King Ida's castle, huge and square, From its tall rock look grimly down, And on the swelling ocean frown; Then from the coast they bore away, And reached the Holy Island's bay. IX. The tide did now its flood-mark gain, And girdled in the Saint's domain : For, with the flow and ebb, its stile Dry-shod, o'er sands, twice every day, Of staves and sandaled feet the trace. As to the port the galley flew, Higher and higher rose to view The Castle, with its battled walls, The ancient Monastery's halls, A solemn, huge, and dark-red pile, Placed on the margin of the isle. |