The Lady of the Lake. Walter Scott

Rent by the lightning's recent stroke.

       Brian the Hermit by it stood,

       Barefooted, in his frock and hood.

       His grizzled beard and matted hair

       Obscured a visage of despair;

       His naked arms and legs, seamed o'er,

       The scars of frantic penance bore.

       That monk, of savage form and face

       The impending danger of his race

       Had drawn from deepest solitude

       Far in Benharrow's bosom rude.

       Not his the mien of Christian priest,

       But Druid's, from the grave released

       Whose hardened heart and eye might brook

       On human sacrifice to look;

       And much, 't was said, of heathen lore

       Mixed in the charms he muttered o'er.

       The hallowed creed gave only worse

       And deadlier emphasis of curse.

       No peasant sought that Hermit's prayer

       His cave the pilgrim shunned with care,

       The eager huntsman knew his bound

       And in mid chase called off his hound;'

       Or if, in lonely glen or strath,

       The desert-dweller met his path

       He prayed, and signed the cross between,

       While terror took devotion's mien.

      V.

       Of Brian's birth strange tales were told.

       His mother watched a midnight fold,

       Built deep within a dreary glen,

       Where scattered lay the bones of men

       In some forgotten battle slain,

       And bleached by drifting wind and rain.

       It might have tamed a warrior's heart

       To view such mockery of his art!

       The knot-grass fettered there the hand

       Which once could burst an iron band;

       Beneath the broad and ample bone,

       That bucklered heart to fear unknown,

       A feeble and a timorous guest,

       The fieldfare framed her lowly nest;

       There the slow blindworm left his slime

       On the fleet limbs that mocked at time;

       And there, too, lay the leader's skull

       Still wreathed with chaplet, flushed and full,

       For heath-bell with her purple bloom

       Supplied the bonnet and the plume.

       All night, in this sad glen the maid

       Sat shrouded in her mantle's shade:

       She said no shepherd sought her side,

       No hunter's hand her snood untied.

       Yet ne'er again to braid her hair

       The virgin snood did Alive wear;

       Gone was her maiden glee and sport,

       Her maiden girdle all too short,

       Nor sought she, from that fatal night,

       Or holy church or blessed rite

       But locked her secret in her breast,

       And died in travail, unconfessed.

      VI.

       Alone, among his young compeers,

       Was Brian from his infant years;

       A moody and heart-broken boy,

       Estranged from sympathy and joy

       Bearing each taunt which careless tongue

       On his mysterious lineage flung.

       Whole nights he spent by moonlight pale

       To wood and stream his teal, to wail,

       Till, frantic, he as truth received

       What of his birth the crowd believed,

       And sought, in mist and meteor fire,

       To meet and know his Phantom Sire!

       In vain, to soothe his wayward fate,

       The cloister oped her pitying gate;

       In vain the learning of the age

       Unclasped the sable-lettered page;

       Even in its treasures he could find

       Food for the fever of his mind.

       Eager he read whatever tells

       Of magic, cabala, and spells,

       And every dark pursuit allied

       To curious and presumptuous pride;

       Till with fired brain and nerves o'erstrung,

       And heart with mystic horrors wrung,

       Desperate he sought Benharrow's den,

       And hid him from the haunts of men.

      VII.

       The desert gave him visions wild,

       Such as might suit the spectre's child.

       Where with black cliffs the torrents toil,

       He watched the wheeling eddies boil,

       Jill from their foam his dazzled eyes

       Beheld the River Demon rise:

       The mountain mist took form and limb

       Of noontide hag or goblin grim;

       The midnight wind came wild and dread,

       Swelled with the voices of the dead;

       Far on the future battle-heath

       His eye beheld the ranks of death:

       Thus the lone Seer, from mankind hurled,

       Shaped forth a disembodied world.

       One lingering sympathy of mind

       Still bound him to the mortal kind;

       The only parent he could claim

       Of ancient Alpine's lineage came.

       Late had he heard, in prophet's dream,

       The fatal Ben-Shie's boding scream;

       Sounds, too, had come in midnight blast

       Of charging steeds, careering fast

       Along Benharrow's shingly side,

       Where mortal horseman ne'er might ride;

       The thunderbolt had split the pine—

       All augured ill to Alpine's line.

       He girt his loins, and came to show

       The signals of impending woe,

       And now stood prompt to bless or ban,

       As bade the Chieftain of his clan.

      VIII.

       'T was all prepared;—and from the rock

       A goat, the patriarch of the flock,

       Before the kindling pile was laid,

       And pierced by Roderick's ready blade.

       Patient the sickening victim eyed

       The life-blood ebb in crimson tide

       Down his clogged beard and shaggy limb,

       Till darkness glazed his eyeballs dim.

       The grisly priest, with murmuring