He had played it to King Charles the Good,
When he kept court at Holyrood;
And much he wished, yet feared, to try
The long forgotten melody.
Amid the strings his fingers strayed,
And an uncertain warbling made,
And oft he shook his hoary head.
But when he caught the measure wild,
The old man raised his face, and smiled;
And lightened up his faded eye,
With all a poet's ecstasy!
In varying cadence, soft or strong,
He swept the sounding chords along:
The present scene, the future lot,
His toils, his wants, were all forgot:
Cold diffidence, and age's frost,
In the full tide of song were lost;
Each blank, in faithless memory void,
The poet's glowing thought supplied;
And, while his harp responsive rung,
'Twas thus the latest minstrel sung.
THE TOMB OF MICHAEL SCOTT.
By a steel-clenched postern door,
They entered now the chancel tall;
The darkened roof rose high aloof
On pillars, lofty, and light, and small The key-stone that locked each ribbed aisle, Was a fleur-de-lys, or a quatre-feuille ; The corbells were carved grotesque and grim; And the pillars with clustered shafts so trim, With base and with capital flourished around, Seemed bundles of lances which garlands had bound.
Full many a scutcheon and banner, riven,
Shook to the cold night-wind of heaven,
Around the screened 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!
The moon on the east oriel shone,
Through slender shafts of shapely stone,
By foliage tracery combined;
Thou wouldst have thought some fairy's hand
"Twixt poplars straight the ozier wand,
In many a freakish knot, 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,
Showed 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 moon-beam kissed the holy pane,
And threw on the pavement a bloody stain.
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 countries I have trod,
And fought beneath the Cross of God;
Now, strange to mine eyes thine arms appear,
And their iron clang sounds strange to my ear.
"In these fair climes, it was my lot
To meet the wondrous Michael Scott;
A wizard of such dreaded fame,
That when, in Salamanca'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.
"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 death-bed laid;
They would rend this abbaye's massy nave,
And pile it in heaps above his grave,
'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 tolled 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.
"It was a night of woe and dread,
When Michael in the tomb I laid!
Strange sounds along the chancel past,
The banners waved without a blast!"-
-Still spoke the monk, when the bell tolled one!
I tell you that a braver man,
Than William of Deloraine, good at need,
Against a foe ne'er spurred a steed;
Yet somewhat was he chilled with dread,
And his hair did bristle upon his head.
"Lo, warrior! now the Cross of Red,
Points to the grave of the mighty dead;
Within it burns a wonderous light,
To chase the spirits that love the night:
That lamp shall burn unquenchably,
Until the eternal doom shall be !"
Slow moved the monk to the broad flag-stone,
Which the bloody cross was traced upon :
He pointed to a secret nook;
An iron bar the warrior took;
And the monk made a sign with his withered hand, The grave's huge portal to expand.
With beating heart to the task he went, His sinewy frame o'er the grave-stone bent; With bar of iron heaved amain,
Till the toil-drops fell from his brows, like rain.
It was by dint of passing strength,
That he moved the massy stone at length,
I would you had been there, to see
How the light broke forth so gloriously,
Streamed upward to the chancel roof,
And through the galleries far aloof!
No earthly frame blazed e'er so bright;
It shone like heaven's own blessed light;
And issuing from the tomb,
Showed the monk's cowl, and visage pale,
Danced on the dark-browed warrior's mail,
And kissed his waving plume.
|