VI.
And, as they came, with Alpine’s lord
The Hermit Monk held solemn word:—
“Roderick! it is a fearful strife,
For man endowed with mortal life,
Whose shroud of sentient clay can still
Feel feverish pang and fainting chill,
Whose eye can stare in stony trance,
Whose hair can rouse like warrior’s lance,—
’Tis hard for such to view, unfurl’d,
The curtain of the future world.
Yet, witness every quaking limb,
My sunken pulse, my eyeballs dim,
My soul with harrowing anguish torn,
This for my Chieftain have I borne!—
The shapes that sought my fearful couch,
A human tongue may ne’er avouch;
No mortal man,—save he, who, bred
Between the living and the dead,
Is gifted beyond nature’s law,—
Had e’er survived to say he saw.
At length the fateful answer came,
In characters of living flame!
Not spoke in word, nor blazed[230] in scroll,
But borne and branded on my soul;—
Which spills the foremost foeman’s life,
That party conquers in the strife.”—
[VII.]
“Thanks, Brian, for thy zeal and care!
Good is thine augury, and fair.
Clan-Alpine ne’er in battle stood,
But first our broadswords tasted blood.
A surer victim still I know,
Self-offer’d to the auspicious blow:
A spy has sought my land this morn,—
No eve shall witness his return!
My followers guard each pass’s mouth,
To east, to westward, and to south;
Red Murdoch, bribed to be his guide,
Has charge to lead his steps aside,
Till, in deep path or dingle brown,
He light on those shall bring him down.
—But see, who comes his news to show!
Malise! what tidings of the foe?”—