And with prying look each cranny and nook His anxious eyes explore ;
But find can he ne'er the winding stair,
Which he climbed that Dame to see,
Whom spells enthral in the haunted hall,
Where none but once may be.
The earliest ray of dawning day
Beholds his search begun ;
The evening star ascends her car,
Nor yet his search is done;
Whence the neighbours all the Knight now call
By "Guy, the Seeker's" name;
For never he knows one hour's repose
From his wish to find the Dame;
But still he seeks, and aye he seeks,
And seeks, and seeks in vain ;
And still he repeats to all he meets,
"Could I find the sword again!"—
Which words he follows with a groan,
As if his heart would break;
And, oh! that groan has so strange a tone,
It makes all hearers quake!
The villagers round know well its sound,
And when they hear it poured,
A TALE of enchantment, under the title of "Sir Guy, the Seeker," was published by M. G. Lewis, Esq., in his Romantic Legends: that it was miscalled a Northumbrian Tradition is too evident to need a formal proof
"The child is genuine, you may trace
Throughout the sire's transmitted face."
On such subjects Lewis stood alone; and, notwithstanding his wild luxuriance of imagination, his mastery over interest and horror, and even his genuine poetry, I believe there are few who envy the distinction he has deservedly obtained. As to the tale, its origin is humbly offered in the following sketch. The incident of the horn and sword is borrowed from the tradition of Shewin' Shiels, near Hexham. As the ship, in the following story, proceeds, the author endeavours to describe the various beauties and some of the memorabilia of the coast.
"There's a heap of fuilish tales about the auld castle."
"Ay, but Mally, this is true, nowna!"
'Twas sunset, and the crimson sky,
Deceptive to the peasant's eye
(Strange, ills the hues of hope will borrow!)-
Spoke a calm eve, a cheerful morrow.
But to the seaman's practis'd ear
The dying west wind whisper'd fear!
And in the gathering rack he sees
The drear forerunner of the breeze ;-
The timbers frail, a foreign crew,
The squall astern, the coast in view-
The helm became the master's care;
A sullen stillness in the air,
A hollow murmur on the wave,
The fearful chill'd, appall'd the brave-
Save one-a stranger to affright.
His country open'd on his sight,
With all the blissful thoughts it brings;
And Rupert scorn'd the power of kings---
For round him sat his babes and wife,
And he had spent an exile's life
In realms where fortune and the sun
With equal heat on Rupert shone.
Nor had he brought of eastern climes
The gold alone-but India's crimes.
Avarice, that digs his brother's heart
For gain-the oily tongue of art-
Debauch, in swinish riot drown'd-
The groveling eye that seeks the ground,
And dares not brook the look from high-
The frown which slaves in terror fly-
The heart of stone-the furrow'd brow-
The darkling stab-the broken vow.
Loves he his wife? I cannot tell;
He bought her, and again would sell.
His children? While they feed his pride,
While they sit smiling by his side.
Yes, in this hour his callous heart,
Long sear'd, is soften'd. What is art?
Can aught the soul with joy inspire
Like one bright "spark of Nature's fire?"
"The land, the land! Ye sluggard gales,
Blow fresh, and fill our flapping sails!
Ah! who has known, till doom'd to roam,
How sweet the breeze that breathes of home?"
beneath his eager eye,
Deira and Bernicia lie.
There, in the breast of ocean, Tyne
And all his subject streams recline;
And many a human sacrifice
Propitiates their deities;
For dark and dangerous is the bar,
And like a banner in the war,
High lifted on its craggy spear,
The Priory glows in saffron here
To guide, inspire, direct, and save-
Its point the sky, its base the wave;
Meet emblem of the present hour,
For downwards where those shadows low'r,
-The noisy and tumultuous past
Foams on the waves, howls in the blast,
While, overhead, the softest blue
Of heav'n cerulean meets the view.
And there is peace-the future shines,
Pictur'd in Hope's delusive lines,
Bright as the crimson clouds of even-
Isles of gold in the deep of heaven.
And now the coy retiring coast
Recedes in bays; or, 'gainst the host
Of wild waves, where no pilot steers,
Its wall of crags eternal rears.
There Hartley's moon of burning sand,
There the peninsulated land,
Whose jutty cape the sea derides,
While Blyth and Wansbeck lave its sides.
Fair sisters! on your devious way,
Together ye have sought to stray,
Each other's lovely parallel.
From Pont to Cambois who can tell
How many a deep entangled glade,
Green vale, and wild wood's grateful shade,
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