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(From Rokeby)
THE MOON is in her summer glow, | |
| But hoarse and high the breezes blow, | |
| And, racking o’er her face, the cloud | |
| Varies the tincture of her shroud; | |
| On Barnard’s towers and Tees’s stream | 5 |
| She changes as a guilty dream, | |
| When Conscience with remorse and fear | |
| Goads sleeping Fancy’s wild career. | |
| Her light seems now the blush of shame, | |
| Seems now fierce anger’s darker flame, | 10 |
| Shifting that shade, to come and go, | |
| Like apprehension’s hurried glow; | |
| Then sorrow’s livery dims the air, | |
| And dies in darkness, like despair. | |
| Such varied hues the warder sees | 15 |
| Reflected from the woodland Tees, | |
| Then from old Baliol’s tower looks forth, | |
| Sees the clouds mustering in the north, | |
| Hears upon turret-roof and wall | |
| By fits the plashing rain-drop fall, | 20 |
| Lists to the breeze’s boding sound, | |
| And wraps his shaggy mantle round. * * * * * | |
| Far in the chambers of the west, | |
| The gale had sighed itself to rest; | |
| The moon was cloudless now and clear, | 25 |
| But pale, and soon to disappear. | |
| The thin gray clouds wax dimly light | |
| On Brusleton and Houghton height; | |
| And the rich dale, that eastward lay, | |
| Waited the wakening touch of day, | 30 |
| 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 rock-begirdled Gilmanscar, | 35 |
| And Arkingarth, lay dark afar; | |
| While, as a livelier twilight falls, | |
| Emerge proud Barnard’s bannered walls. | |
| High crowned he sits, in dawning pale, | |
| The sovereign of the lovely vale. | 40 |
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| What prospects, from his watchtower high, | |
| Gleam gradual on the warder’s eye!— | |
| Far sweeping to the east, he sees | |
| Down his deep woods the course of Tees, | |
| And tracks his wanderings by the steam | 45 |
| Of summer vapors from the stream; | |
| And ere he pace his destined hour | |
| By Brackenbury’s dungeon-tower, | |
| These silver mists shall melt away, | |
| And dew the woods with glittering spray. | 50 |
| 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, | 55 |
| Wears with his rage no common foe; | |
| For pebbly bank, nor sand-bed here, | |
| Nor clay-mound, checks his fierce career, | |
| Condemned to mine a channelled way | |
| O’er solid sheets of marble gray. | 60 |
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| Nor Tees alone, in dawning bright, | |
| Shall rush upon the ravished sight; | |
| But many a tributary stream | |
| Each from its own dark dell shall gleam: | |
| Staindrop, who, from her sylvan bowers, | 65 |
| Salutes proud Raby’s battled towers; | |
| The rural brook of Egliston, | |
| And Balder, named from Odin’s son: | |
| And Greta, to whose banks erelong | |
| We lead the lovers of the song; | 70 |
| And silver Lune, from Stanmore wild, | |
| And fairy Thorsgill’s murmuring child, | |
| And last and least, but loveliest still, | |
| Romantic Deepdale’s slender rill. | |
| Who in that dim-wood glen hath strayed, | 75 |
| Yet longed for Roslin’s magic glade? | |
| Who, wandering there, hath sought to change | |
| Even for that vale so stern and strange, | |
| Where Cartland’s Crags, fantastic rent, | |
| Through her green copse like spires are sent? | 80 |
| Yet, Albin, yet the praise be thine, | |
| Thy scenes and story to combine! | |
| Thou bid’st him who by Roslin strays | |
| List to the deeds of other days; | |
| Mid Cartland’s Crags thou show’st the cave, | 85 |
| 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, | 90 |
| To lend each scene the interest high | |
| Which genius beams from Beauty’s eye. | |
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