By Greta's side, in evening grey,
To steal upon Matilda's way,
Striving, with fond hypocrisy,
For careless step and vacant eye;
Calming each anxious look and glance,
To give the meeting all to chance,
Or framing, as a fair excuse,
The book, the pencil, or the muse:
Something to give, to sing, to say,
Some modern tale, some ancient lay.
Then, while the long'd-for minutes
last,-
Ah minutes quickly over-past!
Recording each expression free,
Of kind or careless courtesy,
Each friendly look, each softer tone,
As food for fancy when alone.
All this is o'er--but still, unseen,
Wilfrid may lurk in Eastwood green,
To watch Matilda's wonted round,
While springs his heart at every sound.
She comes-'tis but a passing sight,
Yet serves to cheat his weary night;
She comes not-he will wait the
hour
When her lamp lightens in the tower;
'Tis something yet, if, as she past,
Her shade is o'er the lattice cast.
'What is my life, my hope?' he said;
'Alas! a transitory shade.'
Thus wore his life, though reason strove
For mastery in vain with love,
Forcing upon his thoughts the sum
Of present woe and ills to come,
While still he turn'd impatient ear
From Truth's intrusive voice severe.
Gentle, indifferent, and subdued,
In all but this, unmoved he view'd
Each outward change of ill and good.
But Wilfrid, docile, soft, and mild,
Was Fancy's spoil'd and wayward
child;
In her bright car she bade him ride,
With one fair form to grace his side,
Or, in some wild and lone retreat,
Flung her high spells around his seat,
Bathed in her dews his languid head,
Her fairy mantle o'er him spread,
For him her opiates gave to flow
Which he who tastes can ne'er forego,
And placed him in her circle, free
From every stern reality,
Till, to the Visionary, seem
Her day-dreams truth, and truth a
dream.
Woe to the youth whom Fancy gains,
Winning from Reason's hand the reins!
Pity and woe! for such a mind
Is soft, contemplative, and kind;
And woe to those who train such youth,
And spare to press the rights of truth,
The mind to strengthen and anneal,
While on the stithy glows the steel!
O teach him, while your lessons last,
To judge the present by the past;
Remind him of each wish pursued,
How rich it glow'd with promised good;
Remind him of each wish enjoy'd,
How soon his hopes possession cloy'd!
Tell him, we play unequal game
Whene'er we shoot by Fancy's aim;
And, ere he strip him for her race,
Show the conditions of the chase.
Two sisters by the goal are set,
Cold Disappointment and Regret;
One disenchants the winner's eyes
And strips of all its worth the prize,
While one augments its gaudy show
More to enhance the loser's woe.
The victor sees his fairy gold
Transform'd, when won, to drossy
mold;
| But still the vanquish'd mourns his loss, And rues, as gold, that glittering dross.
More wouldst thou know-yon tower
Yon couch unpress'd since parting day,
Yon untrimm'd lamp, whose yellow | Then did I swear thy ray serene
Is mingling with the cold moonbeam,
And yon thin form!-the hectic red
On his pale cheek unequal spread;
The head reclined, the loosen'd hair,
The limbs relax'd, the mournful air.
See, he looks up;—a woful smile
Lightens his woeworn cheek a while,—
'Tis Fancy wakes some idle thought
To gild the ruin she has wrought;
For, like the bat of Indian brakes,
Her pinions fan the wound she makes,
And soothing thus the dreamer's pain,
She drinks his life-blood from the vein.
Now to the lattice turn his eyes,
Vain hope to see the sun arise.
The moon with clouds is still o'ercast,
Still howls by fits the stormy blast;
Another hour must wear away
Ere the East kindle into day.
And hark! to waste that weary hour
He tries the minstrel's magic power:
'Hail to thy cold and clouded beam,
Pale pilgrim of the troubled sky! Hail, though the mists that o'er thee stream
Lend to thy brow their sullen dye! How should thy pure and peaceful eye
Untroubled view our scenes below, Or how a tearless beam supply
To light a world of war and woe!
Fair Queen! I will not blame thee now,
As once by Greta's fairy side; Each little cloud that dimm'd thy brow
Did then an angel's beauty hide. And of the shades I then could chide, Still are the thoughts to memory dear,
For, while a softer strain I tried, They hid my blush, and calm'd my fear.
Was form'd to light some lonely dell, By two fond lovers only seen Reflected from the crystal well; ! Or sleeping on their mossy cell,
Or quivering on the lattice bright, Or glancing on their couch, to tell How swiftly wanes the summer night!'
He starts; a step at this lone hour?
A voice his father seeks the tower,
With haggard look and troubled sense,
Fresh from his dreadful conference.
'Wilfrid! what, not to sleep address'd?
Thou hast no cares to chase thy rest.
Mortham has fall'n on Marston-moor;
Bertram brings warrant to secure
His treasures, bought by spoil and
blood,
For the State's use and public good.
The menials will thy voice obey;
Let his commission have its way
In every point, in every word.'
Then, in a whisper-"Take thy sword!
Bertram is what I must not tell.
I hear his hasty step, farewell!'
FAR in the chambers of the west
The gale had sigh'd itself to rest;
The moon was cloudless now and clear,
But pale, and soon to disappear.
The thin grey clouds wax dimly light
On Brusleton and Houghton height;
And the rich dale, that eastward lay
Waited the wakening touch of day,
To give its woods and cultured plain,
And towers and spires, to light again.
But, westward, Stanmore's shapeless
swell,
And Lunedale wild, and Kelton-fell,
And tracks his wanderings by the Thou bid'st him, who by Roslin strays,
Of summer vapours from the stream; And ere he paced his destined hour By Brackenbury's dungeon-tower, These silver mists shall melt away And dew the woods with glittering spray.
Then in broad lustre shall be shown That mighty trench of living stone, And each huge trunk that, from the side, Reclines him o'er the darksome tide, Where Tees, full many a fathom low, Wears with his rage no common foe; For pebbly bank nor sand-bed here, Nor clay-mound, checks his fierce
Condemn'd to mine a channell'd way O'er solid sheets of marble grey.
Nor Tees alone, in dawning bright,
Shall rush upon the ravish'd sight;
But many a tributary stream
Each from its own dark dell shall gleam:
Staindrop, who, from her silvan
bowers,
Salutes proud Raby's battled towers;
The rural brook of Egliston,
And Balder, named from Odin's son;
And Greta, to whose banks ere long
We lead the lovers of the song;
List to the deeds of other days; 'Mid Cartland's Crags thou show'st
The refuge of thy champion brave;
Giving each rock its storied tale,
Pouring a lay for every dale,
Knitting, as with a moral band,
Thy native legends with thy land,
To lend each scene the interest high
Which genius beams from Beauty's
Bertram awaited not the sight Which sun-rise shows from Barnard's height,
But from the towers, preventing day With Wilfrid took his early way, While misty dawn, and moonbeam pale,
Still mingled in the silent dale.
By Barnard's bridge of stately stone The southern bank of Tees they won; Their winding path then eastward cast, And Egliston's grey ruins pass'd; Each on his own deep visions bent, Silent and sad they onward went. Well may you think that Bertram's mood
To Wilfrid savage seem'd and rude; Well may you think bold Risingham Held Wilfrid trivial, poor, and tame;
And small the intercourse, I ween, Such uncongenial souls between.
Stern Bertram shunn'd the nearer way Through Rokeby's park and chase that lay,
And, skirting high the valley's ridge,
Theycross'd by Greta's ancient bridge,
Descending where her waters wind
Free for a space and unconfined,
As, 'scaped from Brignal's dark-wood
glen,
She seeks wild Mortham's deeper den. There, as his eye glanced o'er the mound
Raised by that Legion long renown'd,
Whose votive shrine asserts their claim
Of pious, faithful, conquering fame, 'Stern sons of war!' sad Wilfrid sigh'd, 'Behold the boast of Roman pride! What now of all your toils are known? A grassy trench, a broken stone!' This to himself; for moral strain To Bertram were address'd in vain.
Of different mood, a deeper sigh
Awoke when Rokeby's turrets high
Were northward in the dawning seen
To rear them o'er the thicket green.
O then, though Spenser's self had
stray'd
Beside him through the lovely glade,
Lending his rich luxuriant glow
Of fancy, all its charms to show,
Pointing the stream rejoicing free,
As captive set at liberty,
Flashing her sparkling waves abroad,
And clamouring joyful on her road;
Pointing where, up the sunny banks,
The trees retire in scatter'd ranks,
Save where, advanced before the rest,
On knoll or hillock rears his crest,
Lonely and huge, the giant Oak,
Stand forth to guard the rearward post,
The bulwark of the scatter'd 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 c'er the foot of Minstrel trode!
Broad shadows o'er their passage fell,
Deeper and narrower grew the dell;
It seem'd some mountain, rent and riven,
A channel for the stream had given,
Hung beetling o'er the torrent's way,
So high the cliffs of limestone grey
Yielding, along their rugged base,
A flinty footpath's niggard space,
Where he, who winds 'twixt rock and
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 grey, Now waving all with greenwood spray; Here trees to every crevice clung, And o'er the dell their branches hung; And there, all splinter'd and uneven, The shiver'd rocks ascend to heaven; Oft, too, the ivy swath'd their breast,
As champions, when their band is And wreathed its garland round their
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 revell'd loud the feudal rout,
And the arch'd halls return'd 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.
With the bright tints of early day, Which, glimmering through the ivy spray,
On the opposing summit lay.
The lated peasant shunn'd 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,
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 And shuddering glance is cast behind
His rosary might love to tell.
As louder moans the wintry wind.
Believe, that fitting scene was laid
But here, 'twixt rock and river, grew For such wild tales in Mortham glade;
A dismal grove of sable yew,
With whose sad tints were mingled
The blighted fir's sepulchral green.
Seem'd that the trees their shadows
cast,
The earth that nourish'd 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 branchescast,
Bestrew'd the ground with every blast.
Though now the sun was o'er the
hill,
In this dark spot 'twas twilight still,
Save that on Greta's farther side
Some straggling beams through copse-
wood glide;
And wild and savage contrast made
For who had seen on Greta's side,
By that dim light, fierce Bertram stride,
In such a spot, at such an hour,—-
If touch'd by Superstition's power,
Might well have deem'd that Hell had
given
A murderer's ghost to upper heaven,
While Wilfrid's form had seem'd to
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 barr'd,
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 retain'd
That dingle's deep and funeral shade, The credence they in childhood gain'd;
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