For mass or prayer can I rarely tarry,

Save to patter an Ave Mary,

When I ride on a Border foray:

Other prayer can I none;

So speed me my errand, and let me begone."

VII

Again on the Knight looked the Churchman old, And again he sighed heavily;

For he had himself been a warrior bold,

And fought in Spain and Italy.

And he thought on the days that were long since

by,

[high:

When his limbs were strong, and his courage was Now, slow and faint, he led the way,

Where, cloistered round, the garden lay;

The pillared arches were over their head,

And beneath their feet were the bones of the dead.

VIII.

Spreading herbs, and flowerets bright,

Glistened with the dew of night;

Nor herb, nor floweret, glistened there,

But was carved in the cloister-arches as fair.
The Monk gazed long on the lovely moon,
Then into the night he looked forth;
And red and bright the streamers light
Were dancing in the glowing north.
So had he seen, in fair Castile,

The youth in glittering squadrons start;
Suddenly the flying jennet wheel,

And hurl the unexpected dart.

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,

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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,
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 wouldst have thought some fairy's hand,
"Twixt poplars straight, the osier 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,

Showed many a prophet, and many a saint,
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.

XIL

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 luy ear.

XIII.

"In these far climes, it was my lot
To meet the wondrous Michael Scott;
A wizard of such dreaded fame,
That when, in Salamanea'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 store:

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.

XVI.

"It was a night of woe and dread, When Michael in the tomb I laid;

Strange sounds along the chancel past,

The banners waved without a blast,"

Still spoke the Monk, when the bell tolled ous

I tell you, that a braver man

Than William of Deloraine, good at need,

Against a foe ne'er spurred a steed;

Yet somewhat was he chilled with dread,
And his hair did bristle upon his head.

XVII.

"Lo, Warrior! now, the Cross of Red
Points to the grave of the mighty dead;
Within it burns a wondrous light,
To chase the spirits that love the night:
That lamp shall burn unquenchably,
Until the eternal doomshall be."

Slow moved the Monk to the broad flag-stone
Which the bloody Cross was traced upon:

He pointed to a secret nook;

An iron bar the warrior took;

And the Monk made a sign with his withered hand,

The grave's huge portal to expand.

XVII.

With beating heart to the task he went;
His sinewy frame o'er the grave-stone bent;

With bar of iron heaved amain,

Till the toil-drops fell from his brows, like rain,

It was by dint of passing strength,

That he moved the massy stone at length.

I would you had been there, to see

How the light broke forth so gloriously,
Streamed upward to the chancel roof
And through the galleries far aloof!

No earthly flame blazed e'er so bright:
It shone like heaven's own blessed light;
And, issuing from the tomb,

Showed the Monk's cowl, and visage pale,
Danced on the dark-brow'd Warrior's mail,
And kissed his waving plume.

XIX.

Before their eyes the Wizard lay,
As if he had not been dead a day.

His hoary beard in silver rolled,
He seemed some seventy winters old;
A palmer's amice wrapped him round,
With a wrought Spanish baldric bound,

Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea:
His left hand held his Book of Might;
A silver cross was in his right;

The lamp was placed beside his knee:: High and majestic was his look,

At which the fellest fiends had shook,

And all unruffled was his face:

They trusted his soul had gotten grace..

XX.

Often had William of Deloraine

Rode through the battle's bloody plain,
And trampled down the warriors slain,
And neither known remorse or awe;
Yet now remorse and awe he own'd;
His breath came thick, his head swam round
When this strange scene of death he saw.
Bewildered and unnerved he stood,

And the priest prayed fervently, and loud:
With eyes avorted prayed he;

He might not endure the sight to see,

Of the man he had loved so brotherly.

XXI.

And when the Priest his death-prayer had prayedh

Thus unto Deloraine he said:

"Now speed thee what thou hast to do,

Or, Warrior, we may dearly rue;

For those, thou mayest not look upon,

Are gathering fast round the yawning stone!"

Then Deloraine, in terror, took

From the cold hand the Mighty Book,

With iron clasped, and with iron bound:

He thought, as he took it, the dead man frowned;
But the glare of the sepulchral light,

Perchance, had dazzled the warrior's sight.

XXII.

When the huge stone sunk o'er the tomb,

The night returned, in double gloom;

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