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(From Marmion)
AND now the vessel skirts the strand | |
| Of mountainous Northumberland; | |
| Towns, towers, and halls successive rise, | |
| And catch the nuns’ delighted eyes. | |
| Monk-Wearmouth soon behind them lay, | 5 |
| And Tynemouth’s priory and bay; | |
| They marked, amid her trees, the hall | |
| Of lofty Seaton-Delaval; | |
| They saw the Blythe and Wansbeck floods | |
| Rush to the sea through sounding woods; | 10 |
| They passed the tower of Widdrington, | |
| Mother of many a valiant son; | |
| At Coquet Isle their beads they tell | |
| To the good saint who owned the cell; | |
| Then did the Alne attention claim, | 15 |
| And Warkworth, proud of Percy’s name; | |
| And next they crossed themselves to hear | |
| The whitening breakers sound so near, | |
| Where, boiling through the rocks, they roar | |
| On Dunstanborough’s caverned shore; | 20 |
| Thy tower, proud Bamborough, marked they there, | |
| King Ida’s castle, huge and square, | |
| From its tall rock look grimly down, | |
| And on the swelling ocean frown; | |
| Then from the coast they bore away, | 25 |
| And reached the Holy Island’s bay. | |
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| The tide did now its flood-mark gain, | |
| And girdled in the saint’s domain: | |
| For, with the flow and ebb, its style | |
| Varies from continent to isle; | 30 |
| Dry-shod, o’er sands, twice every day, | |
| The pilgrims to the shrine find way; | |
| Twice every day, the waves efface | |
| Of staves and sandalled feet the trace. | |
| As to the port the galley flew, | 35 |
| Higher and higher rose to view | |
| The castle with its battled walls, | |
| The ancient monastery’s halls, | |
| A solemn, huge, and dark red pile, | |
| Placed on the margin of the isle. | 40 |
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| In Saxon strength that abbey frowned, | |
| With massive arches broad and round, | |
| That rose alternate, row and row, | |
| On ponderous columns, short and low, | |
| Built ere the art was known, | 45 |
| By pointed aisle and shafted stalk, | |
| The arcades of an alleyed walk | |
| To emulate in stone. | |
| On the deep walls the heathen Dane | |
| Had poured his impious rage in vain; | 50 |
| And needful was such strength to these, | |
| Exposed to the tempestuous seas, | |
| Scourged by the winds’ eternal sway, | |
| Open to rovers fierce as they, | |
| Which could twelve hundred years withstand | 55 |
| Winds, waves, and Northern pirates’ hand. | |
| Not but that portions of the pile, | |
| Rebuilded in a later style, | |
| Showed where the spoiler’s hand had been; | |
| Not but the wasting sea-breeze keen | 60 |
| Had worn the pillar’s carving quaint, | |
| And mouldered in his niche the saint, | |
| And rounded, with consuming power, | |
| The pointed angles of each tower; | |
| Yet still entire the abbey stood, | 65 |
| Like veteran, worn, but unsubdued. | |
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