FOOTNOTE:
[9] Vide Notes to Sir Lancelot Threlkeld, for a notice of Lord Clifford the Shepherd.
GUNILDA;
OR, THE WOEFUL CHASE.
A joyful train left Lucy's halls
At morning, cheer'd with bugle calls,
That long ere eve, a mournful train,
Returned to Lucy's halls again.
They went with hound and spear and bow,
To lay the prowling wild-wolf low.
They came with hound and bow and spear—
And one fair daughter on her bier.
Her prancing palfrey starting wide,
She gallop'd from Lord Lucy's side,
A shining huntress, gay, and bold,
And fair as Dian's self of old.
The quarry cross'd her lover's view;
He led the chace with shrill halloo,
Through brake and furze, by stream and dell,
Nor stopp'd until the quarry fell.
Far off aloud rang out his horn
The triumph on the echoes borne,
Long ere the listening maid drew rein
To woo it to her ear in vain.
Bright as a phantom, far astray,
She stood where broad before her lay
Wilton's high wastes and forest rude,
And all the Copeland solitude.
Far off, and farther, rang the horn:
Farther the echoes seem'd to mourn.
"Now, my good Bay, thy frolic o'er,
Thy swiftest and thy best once more!"
By Hole of Haile she turned her steed:
Coursed gaily on by Yeorton Mead;
Glanced where St. Bridget's hamlet show'd;
And down into the coppice rode.
And singing on in gladness there,
She pass'd beside the she-wolf's lair;
When furious from her startled young
The wild brute on Gunilda sprung.
From frighted steed dragg'd low to ground,
The she-wolf, with her cubs around,
Made havoc of that peerless form,
And heart with bounding life so warm.
Clearer rang out their horn, to cheer
Their lost one; and proclaim'd them near.
Proudly they said—"Gunilda's eyes
Will brighten when she sees our prize!"—
They found her; but their words were "Woe!"
"Woe to the bank where thou liest low!
Woe to the hunting of this day,
That left thy limbs to beasts, a prey!"
With downcast faces, eyeballs dim,
They bore her up that mount—to him
A Mount of Sorrow evermore,
Too faithful to the name it bore.
They made in Bega's aisle her tomb,
And laid her in the convent gloom;
And carved her effigy in stone,
And hew'd the she-wolf's form thereon—
In pity to this hour to wake
The pilgrim's sorrow for her sake,
And his who blew the lively horn,
Expecting her—and came to mourn.