The Complete Poems of Sir Walter Scott. Walter Scott

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,

       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