THE STAR-SEER.

CANTO SECOND.

The Pilgrimage.

What have we here? a man or a fish?——Legged like a man! and his fins like arms!

I.

SHAKSPEARE.

"FRANCISCO!" the loitering Page drew near:

"My Ladye!" he said, in a voice of fear;

For he saw,

in the shadowy twilight dim,

A small grey man, of aspect grim,

Start forth from a rifted alder tree,

As the royal Elf of the wood were he:

"Ride forward, and spere of yonder wight,

If he ken the road that leads aright,

Through these lonely wilds, to OSWALD TOWer,

Which we would gain ere the midnight hour;
For there, if report but soothly tells,

ANSELMO, the far-famed Star-Seer dwells."
FRANCISCO bowed; but his look pourtrayed
That he felt in his heart right sore afraid
To quit his Ladye, and hold a parle
Alone with the uncouth elfin carle;

And, though he dared not disobey,
He reined not his steed the nearest way
To greet the wight-but as ye, no doubt,
In his case had done-a roundabout,
And a rather tardy course he steered

To the dexter hand:-the Elf appeared

To wait his coming; for there he stood,
In a strange, uncourteous attitude,

With his kimbo arms on his gaunt thigh-bones,
And his feet apart on two huge grey stones.
"FRANCISCO, speed!" "I will! I will!"

And so he would, but his barb stood still,

As if he beheld a sight of dread;

His ears projected from out his head,

Like the horns of a snail; his long black tail,

That featly was wont to switch in the gale,
Between his trembling haunches clung,

And, 'neath the saddle-girth, bristling hung. "Jesu shield me!" FRANCISCO cried;

For he saw the Elf, with a hasty stride, Advancing towards him-he closed his eyesHis brain whirled round-his energies

Within him died—and his cold, damp brow

Sunk, with a swoop, on the saddle-bow;

As he had been struck by a foe abaft,

That moment dern, with a mortal shaft!

II.

The wight drew near: he was, in sooth,

A caitiff of form the most uncouth.

On his head a conical cap he wore,

Of woollen woof, turned up before;
'Neath which flashed fitfully eyes of grey,
Like gleams of the sun, on a stormy day;

D

And, 'tween them, abruptly swelling, rose

A horned, thin, irregular nose,

Like a hill which overhangs the sea,

In rugged and wild sublimity,

In which the incessant dash of the waves,

Had scooped two narrow and darkling caves.

His scantily-bearded lower jaw

Moved, like a pendulum, to and fro';

Revealing a wall of ivory strong,

That grinningly guarded a roofless tongue.
His head, deprived of its woollen tower,

Had been than his mountain-shoulders lower,
Like a rock with withered heather crowned,
Between two others that o'er it frowned.
His long arm seemed from his back to spring
Like the skeleton-bone of a dragon's wing;
And his grey-clad form looked an iron mass,
Raised on diminutive pillars of brass;
For such, in their saffron hosen dight,
His short legs seemed in the dun twilight,
As they moved on feet, that, strange to tell,
I ween, were the length of a Holland ell!

Perdie! so strange a wight was he,

That whether for earth, or air, or sea,
To creep, or walk, or fly, or swim,
Dame Nature had first intended him,
Ye could not ken:-for this, in vain,
DAN WYATT might pose his learned brain,
Though deeply skilled in her mystic laws,

And reasoning from effect to cause.

III.

Such was the figure that now stood near FRANCISCO's trembling steed of fear.

He seized the reins, which the rider's hand,
Relaxed and thewless, could not command;
And stretching forth, like a bow unbent,

His long, lank arm to its full extent,

He raised the recreant Page on his seat,

With a grasp so strong, that it made him griet

Aloud, and open his eyes; and then

In sooth, he would have swooned again,