THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. Walter Scott

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.

       This den, which, chilling every sense

       Of feeling, hearing, sight,

       Was called the Vault of Penitence,

       Excluding air and light,

       Was, by the prelate Sexhelm, made

       A place of burial for such dead

       As, having died in mortal sin,

       Might not be laid the church within.

       ‘Twas now a place of punishment;

       Whence if so loud a shriek were sent,

       As reached the upper air,

       The hearers blessed themselves, and said,

       The spirits of the sinful dead

       Bemoaned their torments there.

       XVIII

      But though, in the monastic pile,

       Did of this penitential aisle

       Some vague tradition go,

       Few only, save the Abbot, knew

       Where the place lay; and still more few

       Were those, who had from him the clue

       To that dread vault to go.

       Victim and executioner

       Were blindfold when transported there.

       In low dark rounds the arches hung,

       From the rude rock the side-walls sprung;

       The gravestones, rudely sculptured o’er,

       Half sunk in earth, by time half wore,

       Were all the pavement of the floor;

       The mildew-drops fell one by one,

       With tinkling plash upon the stone.

       A cresset, in an iron chain,

       Which served to light this drear domain,

       With damp and darkness seemed to strive,

       As if it scarce might keep alive;

       And yet it dimly served to show

       The awful conclave met below.

       XIX

      There, met to doom in secrecy,

       Were placed the heads of convents three;

       All servants of Saint Benedict,

       The statutes of whose order strict

       On iron table lay;

       In long black dress, on seats of stone,

       Behind were these three judges shown

       By the pale cresset’s ray,

       The Abbess of Saint Hilda’s, there,

       Sat for a space with visage bare,

       Until, to hide her bosom’s swell,

       And tear-drops that for pity fell,

       She closely drew her veil:

       Yon shrouded figure, as I guess,

       By her proud mien and flowing