XXI.

Both Scots, and Southern chiefs, prolong

Applauses of Fitztraver's song:

These hated Henry's name as death,

And those still held the ancient faith.-
Then, from his seat, with lofty air,

Rose Harold, bard of brave St Clair;
St Clair, who, feasting high at Home,
Had with that lord to battle come.
Harold was born where restless seas
Howl round the storm-swept Orcades;
Where erst St Clairs held princely sway
O'er isle and islet, strait and bay ;-
Still nods their palace to its fall,

Thy pride and sorrow, fair Kirkwall !—

Thence oft he marked fierce Pentland rave,

As if grim Odinn rode her wave;

And watched, the whilst, with visage pale,

And throbbing heart, the struggling sail;

N

For all of wonderful and wild

Had rapture for the lonely child.

XXII.

And much of wild and wonderful

In these rude isles might Fancy cull;

For thither came, in times afar,

Stern Lochlin's sons of roving war,

The Norsemen, trained to spoil and blood,
Skilled to prepare the raven's food;

Kings of the main their leaders brave,
Their barks the dragons of the wave.
And there, in many a stormy vale,

The Scald had told his wondrous tale;

And many a Runic column high

Had witnessed grim idolatry.

And thus had Harold, in his youth,

Learned many a Saga's rhyme uncouth,Of that Sea-Snake, tremendous curled, Whose monstrous circle girds the world;

5

Of those dread Maids, whose hideous yell
Maddens the battle's bloody swell;

Of chiefs, who, guided through the gloom
By the pale death-lights of the tomb,

Ransacked the graves of warriors old,

Their faulchions wrenched from corpses' hold,

Waked the deaf tomb with war's alarms,

And bade the dead arise to arms!

With war and wonder all on flame,

To Roslin's bowers young Harold came,
Where, by sweet glen and greenwood tree,
He learned a milder minstrelsy;

Yet something of the northern spell

Mixed with the softer numbers well.

XXIII.
Harold.

O listen, listen, ladies gay!

No haughty feat of arms I tell:

Soft is the note, and sad the lay,

That mourns the lovely Rosabelle.

"Moor, moor the barge, ye gallant crew!

And, gentle ladye, deign to stay!

Rest thee in Castle Ravensheuch,

Nor tempt the stormy firth to-day.

"The blackening wave is edged with white; To inch and rock the sea-mews fly;

The fishers have heard the Water Sprite,

Whose screams forebode that wreck is nigh.

"Last night the gifted Seer did view

A wet shroud swathed round ladye gay; Then stay thee, Fair, in Ravensheuch :

Why cross the gloomy firth to-day?"—

" "Tis not because Lord Lindesay's heir To-night at Roslin leads the ball,

But that my ladye-mother there

Sits lonely in her castle-hall.

* Inch, Isle.

" 'Tis not because the ring they ride,

And Lindesay at the ring rides well, But that my sire the wine will chide, If 'tis not filled by Rosabelle.”—

O'er Roslin all that dreary night

A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam; 'Twas broader than the watch-fire light, And redder than the bright moon-beam

It glared on Roslin's castled rock,

It ruddied all the copse-wood glen; 'Twas seen from Dreyden's groves of oak, And seen from caverned Hawthornden.

Seemed all on fire that chapel proud,

Where Roslin's chiefs uncoffined lie;

Each Baron, for a sable shroud,

Sheathed in his iron panoply.