And clamoring joyful on her road;
Pointing where, up the sunny banks,
The trees retire in scattered ranks,
Save where, advanced before the rest,
On knoll or hillock rears his crest,
Lonely and huge, the giant Oak,
As champions when their band is broke
Stand forth to guard the rearward post,
The bulwark of the scattered host-
All this and more might Spenser say,
Yet waste in vain his magic lay,
While Wilfrid eyed the distant tower
Whose lattice lights Matilda's bower.
The open vale is soon passed o'er,
Rokeby, though nigh, is seen no more;
Sinking mid Greta's thickets deep,
A wild and darker course they keep,
A stern and lone yet lovely road
As e'er the foot of minstrel trode !
Broad shadows o'er their passage fell,
Deeper and narrower grew the dell;
It seemed some mountain, rent and riven,
A channel for the stream had given,
So high the cliffs of limestone gray
Hung beetling o'er the torrent's way,
Yielding along their rugged base
A flinty footpath's niggard space,
Where he who winds 'twixt rock and wave
May hear the headlong torrent rave,
And like a steed in frantic fit,
That flings the froth from curb and bit,
May view her chafe her waves to spray
O'er every rock that bars her way,
Till foam-globes on her eddies ride,
Thick as the schemes of human pride
That down life's current drive amain,
As frail, as frothy, and as vain!
The cliffs that rear their haughty head
High o'er the river's darksome bed
Were now all naked, wild, and gray,
Now waving all with greenwood spray;
Here trees to every crevice clung
And o'er the dell their branches hung;
And there, all splintered and uneven,
The shivered rocks ascend to heaven;
Oft, too, the ivy swathed their breast
And wreathed its garland round their crest,
Or from the spires bade loosely flare
Its tendrils in the middle air.
As pennons wont to wave of old
O'er the high feast of baron bold,
When revelled loud the feudal rout
And the arched halls returned their shout,
Such and more wild is Greta's roar,
And such the echoes from her shore,
And so the ivied banners gleam, Waved wildly o'er the brawling stream.
Now from the stream the rocks recede,
But leave between no sunny mead,
No, nor the spot of pebbly sand
Oft found by such a mountain strand,
Forming such warm and dry retreat
As fancy deems the lonely seat
Where hermit, wandering from his cell,
His rosary might love to tell.
But here 'twixt rock and river grew
A dismal grove of sable yew,
With whose sad tints were mingled seen
The blighted fir's sepulchral green.
Seemed that the trees their shadows cast
The earth that nourished them to blast;
For never knew that swarthy grove
The verdant hue that fairies love,
Nor wilding green nor woodland flower
Arose within its baleful bower:
The dank and sable earth receives
Its only carpet from the leaves
That, from the withering branches cast,
Bestrewed the ground with every blast.
Though now the sun was o'er the hill,
In this dark spot 't was twilight still,
Save that on Greta's farther side
Some straggling beams through copsewood
glide;
And wild and savage contrast made
That dingle's deep and funeral shade
With the bright tints of early day,
Which, glimmering through the ivy spray,
On the opposing summit lay.
The lated peasant shunned the dell;
For Superstition wont to tell
Of many a grisly sound and sight,
Scaring its path at dead of night.
When Christmas logs blaze high and wide
Such wonders speed the festal tide,
While Curiosity and Fear,
Pleasure and Pain, sit crouching near,
Till childhood's cheek no longer glows,
And village maidens lose the rose.
The thrilling interest rises higher,
The circle closes nigh and nigher,
And shuddering glance is cast behind,
As louder moans the wintry wind.
Believe that fitting scene was laid
For such wild tales in Mortham glade;
For who had seen on Greta's side
By that dim light fierce Bertram stride,
In such a spot, at such an hour,
If touched by Superstition's power,
Might well have deemed that Hell had given
A murderer's ghost to upper heaven, While Wilfrid's form had seemed to glide Like his pale victim by his side.
Nor think to village swains alone
Are these unearthly terrors known,
For not to rank nor sex confined
Is this vain ague of the mind;
Hearts firm as steel, as marble hard,
'Gainst faith and love and pity barred,
Have quaked, like aspen leaves in May,
Beneath its universal sway.
Bertram had listed many a tale
Of wonder in his native dale,
That in his secret soul retained
The credence they in childhood gained :
Nor less his wild adventurous youth
Believed in every legend's truth;
Learned when beneath the tropic gale
Full swelled the vessel's steady sail,
And the broad Indian moon her light
Poured on the watch of middle night,
When seamen love to hear and tell
Of portent, prodigy, and spell :
What gales are sold on Lapland's shore,
How whistle rash bids tempests roar,
Of witch, of mermaid, and of sprite,
Of Erick's cap and Elmo's light;
Or of that Phantom Ship whose form
Shoots like a meteor through the storm
When the dark scud comes driving hard,
And lowered is every top-sail yard,
And canvass wove in earthly looms
No more to brave the storm presumes!
Then mid the war of sea and sky,
Top and top-gallant hoisted high,
Full spread and crowded every sail,
The Demon Frigate braves the gale,
And well the doomed spectators know
The harbinger of wreck and woe.
Then, too, were told in stifled tone
Marvels and omens all their own;
How, by some desert isle or key
Where Spaniards wrought their cruelty,
Or where the savage pirate's mood
Repaid it home in deeds of blood,
Strange nightly sounds of woe and fear
Appalled the listening buccaneer,
Whose light-armed shallop anchored lay
In ambush by the lonely bay.
The groan of grief, the shriek of pain,
Ring from the moonlight groves of cane;
The fierce adventurer's heart they scare,
Who wearies memory for a prayer,
Curses the roadstead, and with gale
Of early morning lifts the sail,
To give, in thirst of blood and prey, A legend for another bay.
Thus, as a man, a youth, a child,
Trained in the mystic and the wild,
With this on Bertram's soul at times
Rushed a dark feeling of his crimes;
Such to his troubled soul their form
As the pale Death-ship to the storm,
And such their omen dim and dread
As shrieks and voices of the dead.
That pang, whose transitory force
Hovered 'twixt horror and remorse
That pang, perchance, his bosom pressed
As Wilfrid sudden he addressed:
'Wilfrid, this glen is never trod
Until the sun rides high abroad,
Yet twice have I beheld to-day
A form that seemed to dog our way;
Twice from my glance it seemed to flee
And shroud itself by cliff or tree.
How think'st thou ? Is our path waylaid?
Or hath thy sire my trust betrayed?
If so' Ere, starting from his dream
That turned upon a gentler theme,
Wilfrid had roused him to reply,
Bertram sprung forward, shouting high,
'Whate'er thou art, thou now shalt stand!'
And forth he darted, sword in hand.
As bursts the levin in its wrath,
He shot him down the sounding path ;
Rock, wood, and stream rang wildly out
To his loud step and savage shout.
Seems that the object of his race
Hath scaled the cliffs; his frantic chase
Sidelong he turns, and now 't is bent
Right up the rock's tall battlement;
Straining each sinew to ascend,
Foot, hand, and knee their aid must lend.
Wilfrid, all dizzy with dismay,
Views from beneath his dreadful way:
Now to the oak's warped roots he clings,
Now trusts his weight to ivy strings;
Now, like the wild-goat, must he dare
An unsupported leap in air;
Hid in the shrubby rain-course now,
You mark him by the crashing bough,
And by his corselet's sullen clank,
And by the stones spurned from the bank,
And by the hawk scared from her nest,
And raven's croaking o'er their guest,
Who deem his forfeit limbs shall pay
The tribute of his bold essay.
See, he emerges! - desperate now
All farther course - yon beetling brow,
Nor eager steed with shrilling neigh
Accused the lagging groom's delay;
Untrimmed, undressed, neglected now,
Was alleyed walk and orchard bough;
All spoke the master's absent care,
All spoke neglect and disrepair.
South of the gate an arrow flight,
Two mighty elms their limbs unite,
As if a canopy to spread
O'er the lone dwelling of the dead;
For their huge boughs in arches bent
Above a massive monument,
Carved o'er in ancient Gothic wise
With many a scutcheon and device :
There, spent with toil and sunk in gloom,
Bertram stood pondering by the tomb.
'It vanished like a flitting ghost!
Behind this tomb,' he said, 't was lost-
This tomb where oft I deemed lies stored
Of Mortham's Indian wealth the hoard.
'Tis true, the aged servants said
Here his lamented wife is laid;
But weightier reasons may be guessed
For their lord's strict and stern behest
That none should on his steps intrude
Whene'er he sought this solitude.
An ancient mariner I knew,
What time I sailed with Morgan's crew,
Who oft mid our carousals spake
Of Raleigh, Frobisher, and Drake;
Adventurous hearts! who bartered, bold,
Their English steel for Spanish gold.
Trust not, would his experience say,
Captain or comrade with your prey,
But seek some charnel, when, at full,
The moon gilds skeleton and skull:
There dig and tomb your precious heap,
And bid the dead your treasure keep;
Sure stewards they, if fitting spell
Their service to the task compel.
Lacks there such charnel? - kill a slave
Or prisoner on the treasure-grave,
And bid his discontented ghost
Stalk nightly on his lonely post.
Such was his tale. Its truth, I ween,
Is in my morning vision seen.'
Wilfrid, who scorned the legend wild,
In mingled mirth and pity smiled,
Much marvelling that a breast so bold
In such fond tale belief should hold,
But yet of Bertram sought to know
The apparition's form and show.
The power within the guilty breast,
Oft vanquished, never quite suppressed,
That unsubdued and lurking lies
To take the felon by surprise
Wilfrid, of gentle hand and heart,
Averse to every active part
But most adverse to martial broil,
From danger shrunk and turned from toil;
Yet the meek lover of the lyre
Nursed one brave spark of noble fire;
Against injustice, fraud, or wrong
His blood beat high, his hand waxed strong.
Not his the nerves that could sustain,
Unshaken, danger, toil, and pain;
But, when that spark blazed forth to flame,
He rose superior to his frame.
And now it came, that generous mood;
And, in full current of his blood,
On Bertram he laid desperate hand,
Placed firm his foot, and drew his brand.
Should every fiend to whom thou'rt sold Rise in thine aid, I keep my hold. — Arouse there, ho! take spear and sword! Attach the murderer of lord!' your
|