BEKAN'S GHYLL.
Dim shadows tread with elfin pace
The nightshade-skirted road,
Where once the sons of Odin's race
In Bekan's vale abode;
Where, long ere rose Saint Mary's pile,
The vanquish'd horsemen laid
Their idol Wodin, stained and vile,
Beneath the forest's shade.
There hid—while clash of clubs and swords
Resounded in the dell,
To save it from the Briton's hordes
When Odin's warriors fell—
It lay with Bekan's mightiest charms
Of magic on its breast;
While Sorcery, with its hundred arms,
Had sealed the vale in rest.
It woke when fell with sturdy stroke
The Norman axe around,
And builders' hands in fragments broke
The Idol from the ground;
And hewed therefrom that corner stone
Which yet yon tower sustains,
Where Wodin's Moth sits, grim and lone,
And holds the dell in chains.
There youth at love's sweet call oft glides
By cloister, aisle, and nave,
To stop above the stone that hides
The beauteous Fleming's grave:—
Fair flower of Aldingham—the child
Of old Sir William's days,—
Low where the Bekan straggling wild
Its deadly arms displays.
There in the quiet more profound
Than sleep, than death more drear,
Her shadow walks the silent ground
When leaves are green or sere;
When autumn with its cheerless sky
Or winter with its pall,
Puts all the year's fair promise by
With fruits that fade and fall.
And where the Bekan by the rill
So bitter once, now sweet,
Its lurid purples ripens still
While ages onward fleet,
She tastes the deadly flower by night,—
If yet its juices flow
Sweet as of yore; for then to light
And rest her soul shall go.
Ah, blessed forth from far beyond
The Jordan once he came,—
Her Red-cross Knight,—the marriage bond
To twine with love and fame:
His meed of valour, Beauty's charms,
Pledged with one silvery word,
Beneath the forest's branching arms
And by the breezes stirred.
Another week! and she would stand
In Urswick's halls a bride:
Another week! the marriage band
Had round her life been tied:
When wild with joyfulness of heart
That beat not with a care,
She carolled forth alone, to start
The grim Moth from its lair.
She bounded from his heart elate!
But Urswick's halls of light,
And Aldingham's embattled gate
No more shall meet her sight.
For her no happy bridal crowd
Press out into the road,
But Furness monks with dirges loud
Bend round her last abode.
To chase the moth that guards the flower
That makes the dell its own,
Flew forth the maid from hall and tower
Through wood and glen alone.
Where Odin's men had left their god
In earth, long overgrown
With tangled bushes rude, she trod
Enchanted ground unknown.
The abbey walls before her gaze
At distance rising fair,
While deep within the magic maze
She wandered unaware:
She loitered with the song untired
Upon her lips, nor thought
What foes against her peace conspired,
While love his lost one sought!
They found her with close-lidded eyes,
Watched by that Moth unblest,
Perched high between her and the skies,
And nightshade on her breast.
There lay she with her lips apart
In peace; by Wodin's power
Stilled into death her truest heart
With Bekan's lurid flower.
Woe was it when Sir William's hall
Received the mournful train:
No more her voice with sweetest call
His morns to wake again!
No more her merry step to cheer
The days when clouds were wild!
No more her form on palfrey near
When sport his noons beguiled!
Worse woe when Furness monks with dole—
While gentle hands conveyed
Her body—for a parted soul
The solemn ritual said;
And laid her where the waving leaves
Breathed low amidst the calm,
When loud upon the fading eves
Rolled organ-chant and psalm.
With Urswick's hand in fondest grasp
Said Fleming—"Vainly rise
My days for me: my heart must clasp
Her image, or it dies!
Through mass and prayer I hear her voice;
I know the fiends have power—
That chant and dole and choral noise
Can purge not—o'er that flower!"
They wandered where Engaddi's palms
And Sharon's roses wave;
Where Hebrew virgins chant their psalms
By many a mountain cave:
Mid rock-hewn chambers by the Nile,
Where Magian fathers lay;—
The secret of the spell-struck pile
To drag to realms of day.
In vain! His gallant heart sleeps well,
Beneath the Lybian air;
And still the enchantment holds the dell,
And her so sweet and fair.
Still on yon loop hole stretched by night,
The tyrant-moth is laid:
While circling in their ceaseless flight
The ages rise and fade.
There sometimes as in nights of yore,
Heard faint and sweet, a sound
Peals from yon tower, while o'er and o'e
The vale repeats it round.
And down the glen the muffled tone
Floats slowly, long upborne;
Answered as if far off were blown
A warrior's bugle-horn.
Yet one day, with unconscious art,
May some rude hand unfold
Great Wodin's breast, and rend apart
The fragment from its hold.
Then, while the deadly nightshade's veins
In bitter streams shall pour
Their juices, his usurped domains
Shall own the Moth no more.
Then him a milk white swallow's power
Shall timely overthrow.
And fair, as from a beauteous bower,
In raiment like the snow,
The Flower of Aldingham—the child
Of old Sir William's days—
Shall break the bondage round her piled;
But not to meet his gaze.
Nor forth beneath the dewy dawn,
All radiant like the morn,
Shall Urswick's Knight lead up the lawn
Beside the scented thorn,
His bride into the blighted halls
Whence once she wildly strayed
In ages past, by Furness walls,
And with the Bekan played.
The sea-snake through the chambers roves
Of old Sir William's home—
Fair Aldingham, its bowers, and groves,
And fields she loved to roam:
And where the gallant Urswick graced
His own ancestral board,
Now ferns and wild weeds crowd the waste,
The creeping fox is lord.
But gracious spirits of the light
Shall call a welcome down
On her, the beauteous lady bright,
And lead her to her own.
Not to that home o'er which the tide
Unceasing heaves and rolls;
But through that porch which opens wide
Into the land of souls.