FOOTNOTE:
[8] "John Preston of the Manor in Furness, Esquire, married Margaret daughter of Sir Thos. Curwen, of Workington, and had issue, tempore Henry VIII."
THE ALTAR ON CROSS-FELL.
(FORMERLY FIENDS'-FELL.)
Come listen and hear of the Fiends'-Fell dread;
And the helm of storm that shrouds its head,
When the imps and cubs of Evil that tread
Its summit, their strifes are waging:
Who made their haunt on its topmost height,
And down the valleys came often by night,
To affright the Shepherds, the herds to blight,
And set the strong winds raging.
Ah, dwellers in peaceful vales afar!
The cloudy Helm and the dismal Bar—
You know whose work on the Fell they are;
And you know whose wort they are brewing.
And you wish that the saintly Augustine
A warier man on his errand had been,
When the lizard crept into his chalice unseen,
The power of his spells undoing.
For he came, by good men sought, they say,
To the Fiends'-Fell foot, a weary way,
To chase the fiends from the cloud that lay
On its summit, as if to hide it.
At an hour unmarked, by paths unknown,
He climbed up the mountain side alone,
And built on the top an altar of stone,
And reared the cross beside it.
And there within that mighty cloud,
Where wrathful spirits were raging loud,
The old good man, with mind unbow'd,
But body so oft-times bending,
Moved to and fro on the haunted top,
And gathered the stones from off the slope,
Nor bated a jot of heart or hope
While the Altar pile was ascending.
Then while the sun made bright below
And warmed the vales with its cheerful glow,
The mighty cloud began to blow,
And deafening cries flew round him.
But still the altar on high begun
With heart and will, from his labours done
The crowning recompence now has won
For him, to that end who bound him.
There stands the Altar the saint before.
The long laborious task is o'er.
The Cross which once the victim bore,
It too spreads wide its arms.
The Chalice is there with the juice divine;
The wafer that bares the sacred sign;
And the tapers beside the Cross to shine;
To work out the counter-charms.
All ready beside the holy man
Stood—when for a moment his eyes began
To droop, and a feeling of slumber ran
Through his veins oppress'd and weary.
For toil an old man's limbs will shake:
And toil an old man's frame will break:
But, that instant past, he stands awake
Within that cloud so dreary.
It was enough: No counter-charm
Might work that day the fiend-cubs harm.
The Chalice he offers with outstretched arm
Has a reptile form within it!
And neither the saint nor the wine has power
To banish one fiend from the Fell, that hour:
For a lizard the edge of the chalice crept o'er,
While he slept but that tithe of a minute.
Then blew the fiends, as if they would blow
The mountain itself to the plain below.
And when the saint turned round to go,
Down tumbled the Altar behind him:
And boiled and seethed the Helm and Bar,
And the winds rushed down on the valleys afar;
While the Saint emerged, like a shining star,
From the cloud where they could not bind him.
And he went his way; and the fiends prevailed.
And still is the mountain by fiends assailed.
And the dismal Helm from afar is hailed
As a tempest surely growing.
The herdsman shudders, and hies away
To his hut on the hills at close of day,
For he knows whose cubs are abroad at play
And setting the Helm wind blowing.
His children mourn at the dolorous roar,
And rush to his arms from hearth and floor.
But the good man thinks of his stacks and store,
His fields and his farmstead wasting.
The housewife prays that the rain may fall:
But the stars are shining high over all:
And the Bar extends like a pitchy wall
In the West, where the storm is hasting.
The long loud roar, it deepens amain;
And down from the Helm along valley and plain
Goes the wind with invisible hosts in its train,
And they mount the black Bar-cloud appalling;
And they heave it and row it, those mariners dread,
For days, till it anchors on Fiends'-Fell head:
Then the big drops pour from the skies o'er spread,
And the torrents to torrents are calling.