In bright uncertainty they lie,

Like future joys to Fancy's eye.

The water lily to the light

Her chalice rear'd of silver bright;

The doe awoke, and to the lawn, Begemmed with dew-drops, led her fawn; The grey mist left the mountain side,

The torrent shewed its glistening pride;

Invisible in flecked sky,

The lark sent down her revelry;

The black-bird and the speckled thrush

Good-morrow gave

from brake and bush;

In answer cooed the cushet dove,

Her notes of peace, and rest, and love.

III.

No thought of peace, no thought of rest, Assuaged the storm in Roderick's breast. With sheathed broad-sword in his hand, Abrupt he paced the islet strand,

And eyed the rising sun, and laid

His hand on his impatient blade.

Beneath a rock, his vassals' care

Was prompt the ritual to prepare,

With deep and deathful meaning fraught ;

For such Antiquity had taught

Was preface meet, ere yet abroad

The Cross of Fire should take its road.

The shrinking band stood oft aghast

At the impatient glance he cast ;-
Such glance the mountain eagle threw,
As, from the cliffs of Ben-venue,

She spread her dark sails on the wind,
And, high in middle heaven reclined,
With her broad shadow on the lake,

Silenced the warblers of the brake.

IV.

A heap of withered boughs was piled,

Of juniper and rowan wild,

Mingled with shivers from the oak,

Rent by the lightning's recent stroke.

Brian, the Hermit, by it stood,

Bare-footed, in his frock and hood.

His grisled beard and matted hair
Obscured a visage of despair;

His naked arms and legs, seamed o'er,
The scars of frantic penance bore.

That Monk, of savage form and face,

The impending danger of his race

Had drawn from deepest solitude,

Far in Benharrow's bosom rude.

Not his the mien of Christian priest,

But Druid's, from the grave released,

Whose hardened heart and eye might brook

On human sacrifice to look ;

And much, 'twas said, of heathen lore

Mixed in the charms he muttered o'er.

The hallowed creed gave only worse

And deadlier emphasis of curse;

No peasant sought that Hermit's prayer, His cave the pilgrim shunned with care, The eager huntsman knew his bound,

And in mid chase called off his hound; Or if, in lonely glen or strath,

The desert-dweller met his path,

He prayed, and signed the cross between,

While terror took devotion's mien.

V.

Of Brian's birth strange tales were told.
His mother watched a midnight fold,
Built deep within a dreary glen,

Where scattered lay the bones of men,
In some forgotten battle slain,

And bleached by drifting wind and rain.
It might have tamed a warrior's heart,
To view such mockery of his art!
The knot-grass fettered there the hand,
Which once could burst an iron band;

Beneath the broad and ample bone,

That bucklered heart to fear unknown,

A feeble and a timorous guest,

The field-fare framed her lowly nest;

There the slow blind-worm left his slime
On the fleet limbs that mocked at time;
And there, too, lay the leader's skull,
Still wreathed with chaplet flushed and full,
For heath-bell, with her purple bloom,
Supplied the bonnet and the plume.

All night, in this sad glen, the maid
Sate, shrouded in her mantle's shade:
-She said, no shepherd sought her side,
No hunter's hand her snood untied,

Yet ne'er again to braid her hair
The virgin snood did Alice wear;

Gone was her maiden glee and sport,
Her maiden girdle all too short,

Nor sought she, from that fatal night,

Or holy church or blessed rite,