style="font-size:15px;"> Wherever vestal maid might pry,No risk to meet unhallow’d eye, 220
The stranger sisters roam:
Till fell the evening damp with dew,
And the sharp sea-breeze coldly blew,
For there, even summer night is chill.
Then, having stray’d and gazed their fill, 225
They closed around the fire;
And all, in turn, essay’d to paint
The rival merits of their saint,
A theme that ne’er can tire
A holy maid; for, be it known, 230
That their saint’s honour is their own.
XIII.
Then Whitby’s nuns exulting told,
How to their house three Barons bold
Must menial service do;
While horns blow out a note of shame, 235
And monks cry ‘Fye upon your name!
In wrath, for loss of silvan game,
Saint Hilda’s priest ye slew.’-
‘This, on Ascension-day, each year,
While labouring on our harbour-pier, 240
Must Herbert, Bruce, and Percy hear.’-
They told how in their convent-cell
A Saxon princess once did dwell,
The lovely Edelfled;
And how, of thousand snakes, each one 245
Was changed into a coil of stone,
When holy Hilda pray’d;
Themselves, within their holy bound,
Their stony folds had often found.
They told, how sea-fowls’ pinions fail, 250
As over Whitby’s towers they sail,
And, sinking down, with flutterings faint,
They do their homage to the saint.
XIV.
Nor did Saint Cuthbert’s daughters fail,
To vie with these in holy tale; 255
His body’s resting-place, of old,
How oft their patron changed, they told;
How, when the rude Dane burn’d their pile,
The monks fled forth from Holy Isle;
O’er northern mountain, marsh, and moor, 260
From sea to sea, from shore to shore,
Seven years Saint Cuthbert’s corpse they bore.
They rested them in fair Melrose;
But though, alive, he loved it well,
Not there his relics might repose; 265
For, wondrous tale to tell!
In his stone-coffin forth he rides,
A ponderous bark for river tides,
Yet light as gossamer it glides,
Downward to Tilmouth cell. 270
Nor long was his abiding there,
Far southward did the saint repair;
Chester-le-Street, and Rippon, saw
His holy corpse, ere Wardilaw
Hail’d him with joy and fear; 275
And, after many wanderings past,
He chose his lordly seat at last,
Where his cathedral, huge and vast,
Looks down upon the Wear;
There, deep in Durham’s Gothic shade, 280
His relics are in secret laid;
But none may know the place,
Save of his holiest servants three,
Deep sworn to solemn secrecy,
Who share that wondrous grace. 285
XV.
Who may his miracles declare!
Even Scotland’s dauntless king, and heir,
(Although with them they led
Galwegians, wild as ocean’s gale,
And Lodon’s knights, all sheathed in mail, 290
And the bold men of Teviotdale,)
Before his standard fled.
’Twas he, to vindicate his reign,
Edged Alfred’s falchion on the Dane,
And turn’d the Conqueror back again, 295
When, with his Norman bowyer band,
He came to waste Northumberland.
XVI.
But fain Saint Hilda’s nuns would learn
If, on a rock, by Lindisfarne,
Saint Cuthbert sits, and toils to frame 300
The sea-born beads that bear his name:
Such tales had Whitby’s fishers told,
And said they might his shape behold,
And hear his anvil sound;
A deaden’d clang,-a huge dim form, 305
Seen but, and heard, when gathering storm
And night were closing round.
But this, as tale of idle fame,
The nuns of Lindisfarne disclaim.
XVII.
While round the fire such legends go, 310
