List to the valorous deeds that were done Wo to the realms which he coasted! for there II. On Erin's shores was his outrage known, More frequent he sailed, for he won the most. If a sail but gleam'd white 'gainst the welkin Trumpet and bugle to arms did call, ire !" That stern old heathen his head he raised, Give me broad lands on the Wear and the My faith I will leave, and I'll cleave unto thine.' The bargain being struck, old Witikind submitted to the rites of baptism, and became the feudatory of the church. VII. Up then arose that grim convertite, Young Harold was fear'd for his hardihood, Such as should grace that festal day; His doublet of bull's hide was all unbraced, A Danish club in his hand he bore, IX. With thy humbled look and thy monkish brow, Witikind returned this dutiful ad XI. But Count Witikind soon began to dress in kind; when- As he grew feebler his wildness ceased, V. "Thou hast murder'd, robb'd, and spoil'd, Fiends hast thou worshipp'd, with fiendish rite, Grimly smiled Harold, and coldly replied, chide; For me, I am yet what thy lessons have made, broke out; In the blood of slain foemen my finger to dip, eld, For a price, the brave faith that thine ancestors held. When this wolf"-and the carcass he flung on the plain "Shall awake and give food to her nurslings again, on the singing a love song, from which it ap- The heir of Wilton's lofty tower.' VII. Sudden she stops-and starts to feel The sufferance of heaven. Though then he used his gentlest tone: But there was one who had not partaken of the revel; this was 'flaxen hair'd Gunnar,' the page of Lord Harold, and his foster-mother's child. This tenderhearted youth cannot bear to think is no other than the gentle Harold; may well suppose, of his amiable master's being exposed but he will not, probably, be better preto the darkness and cold,'' shelterless wold;' he therefore, loyally, for what follows; which is neither more pared than the trembling Metelill' was, taking advantage of the general ebriety, nor less than a blunt intimation, that he robs one of the priests of his purse, is so well satisfied with her, that he another of his cloak, steals the Senes- intends to do her the honour of tachal's keys, and mounting the Bi- king her to wife,-of which magnanishop's palfry gay,' sets out in search of the self-exiled Harold.' After some hesitation, Harold agrees to accept him as a follower of his fortunes,— 'Twere boothless to tell what climes they sought, mous determination he directs her to inform her parents. Poor Metelill, not exactly relishing the high destiny' allotted her, keeps this dreadful denunciation to herself. But Harold does not allow her much respite. In a few days he makes his appearance again, and bolts into the cottage to demand his When each other glance was quench'd with bride. Wulfstane,' Metelill's father, dread, Bore oft a light of deadly flame That ne'er from mortal courage came. who is a poacher by profession, would at first fain make fight with him, but gathering more presence of mind, on a second survey of his enormous stature, thinks it wiser to turn him over to the management of Jutta,' his wife, who mutter over all her incantations, but is a famous witch.' Jutta begins to finding, at last, that what she had mistaken for a spectre, is, bonâ fide, flesh In the mean time, Count Witikind and blood, she abandons her witchdies, and, bis graceless son not appear- craft, and has recourse to her wit. ing, the church resumes its lands. This She succeeds in prevailing on Harold closes the first Canto. at one With Harold the Dauntless, Count Witikind's son. The next Canto introduces, 'Fair Metefill, a woodland maid,' to defer his purpose for that night, and the moment she gets rid of him, and finishes a conjugal skirmish with her spouse, she starts off, whether on foot or on a broomstick is not stated, and setting every priest she passes, in her hasty journey, to muttering and crossing himself, and every cur to barking, and the foxes to yelling, and the cocks to crowing, and the curlews to screeching, and the ravens to croaking, and the cat-o-mountains to screaming, she proceeds 'cheered by such music,' to a 6 Harold calls upon their reverences without periphrasis or ceremony, for restitution of his lands. Aldingar, when he recovers his powers of speech, tells him that it cannot be, for two reasons, first, because he is an unchristened To Anthony Conyers and Alberic Vere.' VI. deep dell and rocky stone,' where this last objection, by tossing on the alshe raises the very devil himself,-or, tar the head of Conyers and the hand as the poet couches it, in more courtly of Vere, new severed from their carterms, a god of heathen days.' The casses!! second Canto closes with a spirited tête-a-tête, between the witch and the demon, in which it seems to be concluded between this worthy couple, that the best way to cure Lord Harold's love fit, will be to set him by the ears with the church, about his towers and lands, on the Wear and the Tyne.' In the third Canto, Gunnar sings to his Lord, several monitory songs, tending to warn him against the charms of Metelill, and the arts of Jutta, who, it. seems, had set him forward on his errand to St. Cuthbert's' Chapter. ་ The fourth Canto assembles the priests and prelate of St. Cuthbert in - solemn conclave. The haughty Aldingar is seated in the episcopal chair, whilst Canons and deacons were placed below, The twinkle show'd they were not stone. III. The Prelate was to speech address'd, hall. Count Harold laugh'd at their looks of fear: How like ye this music? How trow ye the hand No answer?--I spare ye a space to agree, And again I am with you-grave fathers fare- After this unwelcome intruder retires, that While the wine sparkles high in the goblet of And the revel is loudest, [his] task shall be told: Accordingly a story is sung to him of an enchanted castle, where six monarchs had been simultaneously mur dered, on their wedding night, by their brides, who were sisters, and daughters of Urien; who had been put to death in turn by a seventh monarch, who had married the seventh sister, and who included his own wife in the massacre, and, having quitted the castle, had 'Died in his cloister an anchorite gray.' He is, moreover, told that, Seven monarchs' wealth in that castle lies stow'd, The foul fiends brood o'er them like raven and toad, Whoever shall guesten these chambers within, From curfew till matins, that treasure shall win. To perform this, he is instructed, is the required probation. He exultingly undertakes it; and the curtain drops on the Fourth Canto. In the Fifth Canto, Harold relaxes into something like tender converse with the timid Gunnar, which is suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious monitor, in In Cephalonia's rocky isle.' With this apparition Harold holds solemn communion, which, on the part of the disembodied interlocutor, ends with this dreadful denouncement, If thou yield'st to thy fury, how tempted soever, The gate of repentance shall ope for thee never. A little shocked at this ghostly visitation, Harold bethinks himself of recruiting his courage, with a dram, from a cordial contained in a flasket given him by one of the hospitable monks of St. Cuthbert, and to which the crafty priest had attributed all the virtues which Don Quixote ascribed to his catholicon, though, as it proves in the sequel, this boasted panacea was a distillation of all the noxious plants, that hold dire 'enmity with blood of man.' So baneful their influence on all that had breath, One drop had been frenzy, and two had been death. Happily as Harold was on the point of swallowing this potion, And music and clamour, were heard on the hill, The train of a bridal came blithsomely on; 6 The burden was "Joy to the fair Metelill!” On this pageant Harold soon pounces. But first, he rent a fragment from the cliff,' and hurled on the affrighted train below. Its force and magnitude may be calculated from its effects,-it fell upon Wulfstane, and, from the description, mashed him as completely as one's fist would demolish a moscheto. Lord Harold, and a combat ensues; but the William, however, prepares to engage poor bridegroom would soon have fallen beneath Harold's redoubtable club, had not Gunnar interposed, at the moment it was poised to annihilate him, with its descending stroke. To stop the blow young Gunnar sprung, Around his master's knees he clung, And cried, In mercy spare! O think upon the words of fear Spoke by that visionary seer, The crisis he foretold is hereGraut mercy-or despair!" This appeal is efficacious. Harold is struck with conviction, stays his uplifted hand,-nay, signs himself with the cross! and makes one step towards heaven.' He retires and leaves his antagonist and rival prostrate on the plain, and Metelill stretched insensible beside him. Jutta hastens to revive these exanimate lovers, and espying Harold's famous flasket, which he had left behind him, is about administering its contents to her patients,--when, like a careful nurse, she thinks best to taste it first herself,-and it is well for thein that she did, For when three drops the hag had tasted, The raven gave his fatal croak, So fearful was the sound and stern, The fox and famish'd wolf replied, And thus winds up the Fifth Canto. I could tell of woman's faith Firm was that faith-as diamond stone Harold calls him a wild enthusiast,' yet confesses that could such an one be found, . Her's were a faith to rest upon. They, then, couched them on the floor, 6 • Until the beams of morning glow'd.' Lord Harold, however, rose an alter'd man.' He had had a dismal dream, which, as soon as they had cleared out of the castle, he relates. Among other things, he states that the spirit of bis father Witikind had appeared to him, and revealed himself as the one, who, in the guise of a palmer, had watched over his fate, being doomed, as well for his son's sins as his own, A wanderer upon earth to pine, The old gentleman, he adds, had hinted, too, that Gunnar, 'Must in his lord's repentance aid.' But he appears much perplexed to conjecture how. Soon marking that he had lost his glove, he sends Gunnar back to the tower to look for it. Gunnar had heard his lord's relation, with no ordinary interest; But when he learn'd the dubious close, He blushed like any opening rose, And, glad to hide his tell-tale cheek, When soon a shriek of deadly dread Hied back that glove of mail to seek; Summon'd his master to his aid. Harold burries to his assistance, and finds him in the grasp of a fiend in the form of Odin, the Danish war god. After a short parley, in which the demon claims Gunnar as Eivir,' for his own, Mark'd in the birth-hour with his sign,' the knight and the sprite join issue in terrible conflict, in which all the elements take part. The knight, however, has the best of the battle, and the goblin wisely evanishes' in the storm he had raised. Nor paused the champion of the North, XVII. He placed her on a bank of moss, His stubborn sinews fly; And thus the champion proved, That he fears now who never fear'd, And loves who never loved. |