When Franch'mont locked the treasure cell. An hundred years are passed and gone, And scarce three letters has he won. Such general superstition may Whose gossip history has given May pass the Monk of Durham's tale, Your treasured hoards of various lore, And furnish twenty thousand more? Hoards, not like theirs whose volumes rest To others what they cannot use; Thy volumes, open as thy heart, Delight, amusement, science, art, Yet who, of all who thus employ them, CANTO SIXTH THE BATTLE I WHILE great events were on the gale, Did in the dame's devotions share; To Heaven and saints her sons to aid, And with short interval did pass From prayer to book, from book to mass, And all in high baronial pride, A life both dull and dignified: Yet, as Lord Marmion nothing pressed Dejected Clara well could bear II I said Tantallon's dizzy steep Hung o'er the margin of the deep. Many a rude tower and rampart there Which, when the tempest vexed the sky, Did o'er its Gothic entrance bear, Of sculpture rude, a stony shield; The Bloody Heart was in the field, And in the chief three mullets stood, The cognizance of Douglas blood. The turret held a narrow stair, Which, mounted, gave you access where A parapet's embattled row Did seaward round the castle go. Sometimes in narrow circuit bending, Its varying circle did combine Bulwark, and bartizan, and line, And bastion, tower, and vantage-coign. Above the booming ocean leant The far-projecting battlement; The billows burst in ceaseless flow Upon the precipice below. Where'er Tantallon faced the land, Gate-works and walls were strongly manned; No need upon the sea-girt side: The steepy rock and frantic tide Approach of human step denied, And thus these lines and ramparts rude Were left in deepest solitude. III And, for they were so lonely, Clare And muse upon her sorrows there, Or slow, like noontide ghost, would glide And ever on the heaving tide Look down with weary eye. Oft did the cliff and swelling main For she had laid adown, So Douglas bade, the hood and veil, |