Heart-touch’d, and haply not without a tear.
The royal minstrel, ere the choir is still,
While his free barge skims the smooth flood along,
Gives to that rapture an accordant Rhyme.[151]
O suffering earth! be thankful; sternest clime
And rudest age are subject to the thrill
Of heav’n-descended piety and song.”
Henry Kirke White, in the fragment of a ballad entitled the “Fair Maid of Clifton,” bears even the still more remarkable testimony to a power over evil spirits. He is describing the death-bed of a female who, fearing that the demons would carry her away, had sent for her own relations to pray by her side, and for the “clerk and all the singers besides.”
“And she begged they would sing the penitent hymn,