Walter Scott - The Complete Poems of Sir Walter Scott

And catch the nuns’ delighted eyes.

Monkwearmouth soon behind them lay,

And Tynemouth’s priory and bay;

They marked, amid her trees, the hall

Of lofty Seaton-Delaval;

They saw the Blythe and Wansbeck floods

Rush to the sea through sounding woods;

They passed the tower of Widderington,

Mother of many a valiant son;

At Coquet Isle their beads they tell

To the good saint who owned the cell;

Then did the Alne attention claim,

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 there,

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 floodmark gain,

And girdled in the saint’s domain:

For, with the flow and ebb, its style

Varies from continent to isle;

Dryshod, o’er sands, twice every day,

The pilgrims to the shrine find way;

Twice every day, the waves efface

Of staves and sandalled 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.

X

In Saxon strength that abbey frowned,

With massive arches broad and round,

That rose alternate, row and row,

On ponderous columns, short and low,

Built ere the art was known,

By pointed aisle, and shafted stalk,

The arcades of an alleyed walk

To emulate in stone.

On the deep walls the heathen Dane

Had poured his impious rage in vain;

And needful was such strength to these,

Exposed to the tempestuous seas,

Scourged by the winds’ eternal sway,

Open to rovers fierce as they,

Which could twelve hundred years withstand

Winds, waves, and northern pirates’ hand.

Not but that portions of the pile,

Rebuilded in a later style,

Showed where the spoiler’s hand had been;

Not hut the wasting sea-breeze keen

Had worn the pillar’s carving quaint,

And mouldered in his niche the saint,

And rounded, with consuming power,

The pointed angles of each tower;

Yet still entire the abbey stood,

Like veteran, worn, but unsubdued.

XI

Soon as they neared his turrets strong,

The maidens raised Saint Hilda’s song,

And with the sea-wave and the wind,

Their voices, sweetly shrill, combined

And made harmonious close;

Then, answering from the sandy shore,

Half-drowned amid the breakers’ roar,

According chorus rose:

Down to the haven of the isle

The monks and nuns in order file,

From Cuthbert’s cloisters grim;

Banner, and cross, and relics there,

To meet Saint Hilda’s maids, they bare;

And, as they caught the sounds on air,

They echoed back the hymn.

The islanders, in joyous mood,

Rushed emulously through the flood,

To hale the barque to land;

Conspicuous by her veil and hood,

Signing the cross, the Abbess stood,

And blessed them with her hand.

XII

Suppose we now the welcome said,

Suppose the convent banquet made:

All through the holy dome,

Through cloister, aisle, and gallery,

Wherever vestal maid might pry,

Nor risk to meet unhallowed eye,

The stranger sisters roam;

Till fell the evening damp with dew,

And the sharp sea-breeze coldly blew,

For there e’en summer night is chill.

Then, having strayed and gazed their fill,

They closed around the fire;

And all, in turn, essayed to paint

The rival merits of their saint,

A theme that ne’er can tire

A holy maid; for, be it known,

That their saint’s honour is their own.

XIII

Then Whitby’s nuns exulting told,

How to their house three barons bold

Must menial service do;

While horns blow out a note of shame,

And monks cry, “Fye upon your name!

In wrath, for loss of silvan game,

Saint Hilda’s priest ye slew.”

“This, on Ascension Day, each year,

While labouring on our harbour-pier,

Must Herbert, Bruce, and Percy hear.”

They told, how in their convent cell

A Saxon princess once did dwell,

The lovely Edelfled.

And how, of thousand snakes, each one

Was changed into a coil of stone

When holy Hilda prayed;

Themselves, within their holy bound,

Their stony folds had often found.

They told, how seafowls’ pinions fail,

As over Whitby’s towers they sail,

And, sinking down, with flutterings faint,

They do their homage to the saint.

XIV

Nor did Saint Cuthbert’s daughters fail

To vie with these in holy tale;

His body’s resting-place of old,

How oft their patron changed, they told;

How, when the rude Dane burned their pile,

The monks fled forth from Holy Isle;

O’er northern mountain, marsh, and moor,

From sea to sea, from shore to shore,

Seven years Saint Cuthbert’s corpse they bore.

They rested them in fair Melrose;

But though alive he loved it well,

Not there his relics might repose;

For, wondrous tale to tell!

In his stone coffin forth he rides,

A ponderous barque for river tides,

Yet light as gossamer it glides,

Downward to Tilmouth cell.

Nor long was his abiding there,

For southward did the saint repair;

Chester-le-Street, and Rippon, saw

His holy corpse, ere Wardilaw

Hailed him with joy and fear;

And, after many wanderings past,

He chose his lordly seat at last,

Where his cathedral, huge and vast,

Looks down upon the Wear:

There, deep in Durham’s Gothic shade,

His relics are in secret laid;

But none may know the place,

Save of his holiest servants three,

Deep sworn to solemn secrecy,

Who share that wondrous grace.

XV

Who may his miracles declare!

Even Scotland’s dauntless king and heir,

Although with them they led

Galwegians, wild as ocean’s gale,

And Lodon’s knights, all sheathed in mail,

And the bold men of Teviotdale,

Before his standard fled.

‘Twas he, to vindicate his reign,

Edged Alfred’s falchion on the Dane,

And turned the Conqueror back again,

When, with his Norman bowyer band,

He came to waste Northumberland.

XVI

But fain Saint Hilda’s nuns would learn

If, on a rock, by Lindisfarne,

Saint Cuthbert sits, and toils to frame

The sea-born beads that bear his name:

Such tales had Whitby’s fishers told,

And said they might his shape behold,

And hear his anvil sound:

A deadened clang—a huge dim form,

Seen but, and heard, when gathering storm

And night were closing round.

But this, as tale of idle fame,

The nuns of Lindisfarne disclaim.

XVII

While round the fire such legends go,

Far different was the scene of woe,

Where, in a secret aisle beneath,

Council was held of life and death.

It was more dark and lone, that vault,

Than the worse dungeon cell:

Old Colwulf built it, for his fault,

In penitence to dwell,

When he, for cowl and beads, laid down

The Saxon battleaxe and crown.