Walter Scott - The Complete Poems of Sir Walter Scott

For the gay beams of lightsome day

Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey.

When the broken arches are black in night,

And each shafted oriel glimmers white;

When the cold light’s uncertain shower

Streams on the ruin’d central tower;

When buttress and buttress, alternately,

Seem framed of ebon and ivory;

When silver edges the imagery,

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;

When distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the owlet to hoot o’er the dead man’s grave,

Then go, but go alone the while,

Then view St. David’s ruin’d pile;

And, home returning, soothly swear,

Was never scene so sad and fair!

II

Short halt did Deloraine make there;

Little reck’d he of the scene so fair;

With dagger’s hilt, on the wicket strong,

He struck full loud, and struck full long.

The porter hurried to the gate,

“Who knocks so loud, and knocks so late?”

“From Branksome I,” the warrior cried;

And straight the wicket open’d wide:

For Branksome’s Chiefs had in battle stood,

To fence the rights of fair Melrose;

And lands and livings, many a rood,

Had gifted the shrine for their souls’ repose.

III

Bold Deloraine his errand said;

The porter bent his humble head;

With torch in hand, and feet unshod,

And noiseless step, the path he trod,

The arched cloister, far and wide,

Rang to the warrior’s clanking stride,

Till, stooping low his lofty crest,

He enter’d the cell of the ancient priest,

And lifted his barred aventayle,

To hail the Monk of St Mary’s aisle.

IV

“The Ladye of Branksome greets thee by me,

Says, that the fated hour is come,

And that tonight I shall watch with thee,

To win the treasure of the tomb.”

From sackcloth couch the Monk arose,

With toil his stiffen’d limbs he rear’d;

A hundred years had flung their snows

On his thin locks and floating beard.

V

And strangely on the Knight look’d he,

And his blue eyes gleam’d wild and wide;

“And, darest thou, Warrior! seek to see

What heaven and hell alike would hide?

My breast, in belt of iron pent,

With shirt of hair and scourge of thorn;

For threescore years, in penance spent,

My knees those flinty stones have worn:

Yet all too little to atone

For knowing what should ne’er be known.

Would’st thou thy very future year

In ceaseless prayer and penance drie,

Yet wait thy latter end with fear,

Then, daring Warrior, follow me!

VI

“Penance, father, will I none;

Prayer know I hardly one;

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 be gone.”

VII

Again on the Knight look’d 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,

When his limbs were strong, and his courage was high:

Now, slow and faint, he led the way,

Where, cloister’d round, the garden lay;

The pillar’d arches were over their head,

And beneath their feet were the bones of the dead.

VIII

Spreading herbs, and flowerets bright,

Glisten’d with the dew of night;

Nor herb, nor floweret, glisten’d 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 Castille,

The youth in glittering squadrons start;

Sudden 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 enter’d now the chancel tall;

The darken’d roof rose high aloof

On pillars lofty and light and small;

The keystone, that lock’d each ribbed aisle,

Was a fleur-de-lys, or a quatre-geuille,

The corbells were carved grotesque and grim;

And the pillars, with cluster’d shafts so trim,

With base and with capital flourish’d around,

Seem’d bundles of lances which garlands had bound.

X

Full many a scutcheon and banner riven,

Shook to the cold nightwind of heaven,

Around the screenëd 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 ozier wand,

In many a freakish know, 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,

Shew’d 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 moonbeam kiss’d the holy pane,

And threw on the pavement a bloody stain.

XII

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 coutries have I trod,

And fought beneath the Cross of God:

Now, strange to my eyes thine arms appear,

And their iron clang sounds strange to my ear.

XIII

“In these far climes it was my lot

To meet the wondrous Michael Scott,

A wizard, of such dreaded fame,

Than when, in Salmanca’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 stone:

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 deathbed laid;

They would rend they Abbay’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 toll’d 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!