IV.
A heap of wither’d boughs was piled,
Of juniper and rowan[168] wild,
Mingled with shivers from the oak,
Rent by the lightning’s recent stroke.
Brian, the Hermit, by it stood,
Barefooted, in his frock and hood.[169]
His grisled beard and matted hair
Obscured a visage of despair;
His naked arms and legs, seamed o’er,
The scars of frantic penance bore.
That monk, of savage form and face,
The impending danger of his race
Had drawn[170] from deepest solitude,
Far in Benharrow’s[171] bosom rude.
Not his the mien of Christian priest,
But Druid’s,[172] from the grave released,
Whose hardened heart and eye might brook
On human sacrifice to look;
And much, ’twas said, of heathen lore,
Mixed in the charms he muttered o’er.
The hallow’d creed gave only worse
And deadlier emphasis of curse;
No peasant sought that Hermit’s prayer,
His cave the pilgrim shunn’d with care,
The eager huntsman knew his bound,
And in mid-chase called off his hound;
Or if, in lonely glen or strath,
The desert dweller met his path,
He pray’d, and signed the cross between,
While terror took devotion’s mien.