Walter Scott - The Complete Poems of Sir Walter Scott

Then, when against the driving hail

No longer might my plaid avail,

Back to my lonely home retire,

And light my lamp, and trim my fire;

There ponder o’er some mystic lay,

Till the wild tale had all its sway,

And, in the bittern’s distant shriek,

I heard unearthly voices speak,

And thought the wizard-priest was come

To claim again his ancient home!

And bade my busy fancy range,

To frame him fitting shape and strange,

Till from the task my brow I cleared,

And smiled to think that I had feared.

But chief ‘twere sweet to think such life

(Though but escape from fortune’s strife),

Something most matchless good and wise,

A great and grateful sacrifice;

And deem each hour to musing given

A step upon the road to heaven.

Yet him whose heart is ill at ease

Such peaceful solitudes displease;

He loves to drown his bosom’s jar

Amid the elemental war:

And my black Palmer’s choice had been

Some ruder and more savage scene,

Like that which frowns round dark Lochskene.

There eagles scream from isle to shore;

Down all the rocks the torrents roar;

O’er the black waves incessant driven,

Dark mists infect the summer heaven;

Through the rude barriers of the lake

Away its hurrying waters break,

Faster and whiter dash and curl,

Till down yon dark abyss they hurl.

Rises the fog-smoke white as snow,

Thunders the viewless stream below.

Diving, as if condemned to lave

Some demon’s subterranean cave,

Who, prisoned by enchanter’s spell,

Shakes the dark rock with groan and yell.

And well that Palmer’s form and mien

Had suited with the stormy scene,

Just on the edge, straining his ken

To view the bottom of the den,

Where, deep deep down, and far within,

Toils with the rocks the roaring linn;

Then, issuing forth one foamy wave,

And wheeling round the giant’s grave,

White as the snowy charger’s tail

Drives down the pass of Moffatdale.

Marriott, thy harp, on Isis strung,

To many a Border theme has rung;

Then list to me, and thou shalt know

Of this mysterious man of woe.

Table of Contents

The Convent

I

The breeze, which swept away the smoke,

Round Norham Castle rolled,

When all the loud artillery spoke,

With lightning-flash, and thunder-stroke,

As Marmion left the hold.

It curled not Tweed alone, that breeze,

For, far upon Northumbrian seas,

It freshly blew, and strong,

Where, from high Whitby’s cloistered pile,

Bound to St. Cuthbert’s holy isle,

It bore a barque along.

Upon the gale she stooped her side,

And bounded o’er the swelling tide,

As she were dancing home;

The merry seamen laughed to see

Their gallant ship so lustily

Furrow the green sea-foam.

Much joyed they in their honoured freight;

For, on the deck, in chair of state,

The Abbess of Saint Hilda placed,

With five fair nuns, the galley graced.

II

‘Twas sweet to see these holy maids,

Like birds escaped to greenwood shades,

Their first flight from the cage,

How timid, and how curious too,

For all to them was strange and new,

And all the common sights they view,

Their wonderment engage.

One eyed the shrouds and swelling sail,

With many a benedicite;

One at the rippling surge grew pale,

And would for terror pray;

Then shrieked, because the sea-dog, nigh,

His round black head, and sparkling eye,

Reared o’er the foaming spray;

And one would still adjust her veil,

Disordered by the summer gale,

Perchance lest some more worldly eye

Her dedicated charms might spy;

Perchance, because such action graced

Her fair-turned arm and slender waist.

Light was each simple bosom there,

Save two, who ill might pleasure share -

The Abbess and the novice Clare.

III

The Abbess was of noble blood,

But early took the veil and hood,

Ere upon life she cast a look,

Or knew the world that she forsook.

Fair too she was, and kind had been

As she was fair, but ne’er had seen

For her a timid lover sigh,

Nor knew the influence of her eye.

Love, to her ear, was but a name,

Combined with vanity and shame;

Her hopes, her fears, her joys, were all

Bounded within the cloister wall:

The deadliest sin her mind could reach

Was of monastic rule the breach;

And her ambition’s highest aim

To emulate Saint Hilda’s fame.

For this she gave her ample dower,

To raise the convent’s eastern tower;

For this, with carving rare and quaint,

She decked the chapel of the saint,

And gave the relic-shrine of cost,

With ivory and gems embossed.

The poor her convent’s bounty blest,

The pilgrim in its halls found rest.

IV

Black was her garb, her rigid rule

Reformed on Benedictine school;

Her cheek was pale, her form was spare;

Vigils, and penitence austere,

Had early quenched the light of youth,

But gentle was the dame, in sooth:

Though, vain of her religious sway,

She loved to see her maids obey;

Yet nothing stern was she in cell,

And the nuns loved their Abbess well.

Sad was this voyage to the dame;

Summoned to Lindisfarne, she came,

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,

Or worse, who had dishonoured fled.

Her kinsmen bade her give her hand

To one who loved her for her land;

Herself, almost heart-broken now,

Was bent to take the vestal vow,

And shroud, within Saint Hilda’s gloom,

Her blasted hopes and withered bloom.

VI

She sate upon the galley’s prow,

And seemed to mark the waves below;

Nay, seemed, so fixed her look and eye,

To count them as they glided by.

She saw them not—‘twas seeming all -

Far other scene her thoughts recall -

A sun-scorched desert, waste and bare,

Nor waves nor breezes murmured there;

There saw she, where some careless hand

O’er a dead corpse had heaped the sand,

To hide it till the jackals come,

To tear it from the scanty tomb.

See what a woful 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 uncontrolled,

The shaggy monarch of the wood,

Before a virgin, fair and good,

Hath pacified his savage mood.

But passions in the human frame

Oft put the lion’s rage to shame:

And jealousy, by dark intrigue,

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 grey.

VIII

And now the vessel skirts the strand

Of mountainous Northumberland;

Towns, towers, and halls successive rise,