Though false his tones at times might be, The day arrived-blest be the day, Walter the Abbot came that way! The sacred relic met his view Ah! well the pledge of heaven he knew. He screw'd the chords, he tried a strain ; 'Twas wild-he tuned and tried again; Then pour'd the numbers bold and free, The simple magic melody. The land was charm'd to list his lays; And by their moonlight halls were seen, Blest be his generous heart for aye ! From The Queen's Wake STAFFA. BUT now the dreadful strand they gain, The sheets of foam and the clouds of spray, And the groans that rush'd from the portals gray, Appall'd their hearts and drove them away. They wheel'd their bark to the east around, And moor'd in basin, by rocks imbound; They awed to silence, they trode the strand Where furnaced pillars in order stand, All framed in the liquid burning levin, And bent like the bow that spans the heaven, Or upright ranged in horrid array, With purfle of green o'er the darksome gray. Their path was on wondrous pavement of old, Its blocks all cast in some giant mould, Fair hewn and grooved by no mortal hand, With countermure guarded by sea and by land. The watcher Bushella frown'd over their way, Enrobed in the sea-baize, and hooded with gray; The warder that stands by that dome of the deep. With spray-shower and rainbow, the entrance to keep. But when they drew nigh to the chancel of ocean, And saw her waves rush to their raving devotion, Astounded and awed to the antes they clung, And listen'd the hymns in her temple she sung. The song of the cliff, when the winter winds blow, The thunder of heaven, the earthquake below, Conjoin'd, like the voice of a maiden would be, Compared with the anthem there sung by the sea. The solemn rows in that darksome den, Where dimly seen like the forms of men, Like giant monks in ages agone, Whom the God of the ocean had sear'd to stone, In sackcloth of gray and visors of green, And the big salt tears eternally weep. So rapid the motion, the whirl, and the boil, So loud was the tumult, so fierce the turmoil, Appalled from those portals of terror they turn, On pillar of marble their incense to burn. Around the holy flame they prayThen turning their faces all west away, On angel pavement each bent his knee, And sung this hymn to the God of the sea. From The Queen's Wake. KILMENY'S RECEPTION BY THE THEY claspit her weste and handis fayre, They kissit her cheik, and they kembit her hayir; And runde cam ilka blumyng fere, Sayn, "Bonnye Kilmeny, ye're welcome here! Now shall the land of the spiritis see, Mony lang eir thro' the worild we haif gane, For it's they quha nurice the immortyl minde, The viewless teiris haif ouir them shedde; Or left the cuche of luife to weip. We haif sein! we have sein!-but the tyme mene come, And the angelis will blush at the day of doom! Oh, wald the fayrest of mortyl kynde From The Queen's Wake. |