The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

In each a slender meal was laid,

Of roots, of water, and of bread:

By each, in Benedictine dress,

Two haggard monks stood motionless;

Who, holding high a blazing torch,

Showed the grim entrance of the porch:

Reflecting back the smoky beam,

The dark red walls and arches gleam;

Hewn stones and cement were displayed,

And building tools in order laid.

And now that blind old abbot rose,

To speak the Chapter's doom On those the wall was to enclose,

Alive, within the tomb; But stopped, because that woeful maid, Gathering her powers, to speak essayed; Twice she essayed, and twice in vain; Her accents might no utterance gain; Nought but imperfect murmurs slip From her convulsed and quivering lip; 'Twixt each atternpt all was so still, You seemed to hear a distant rill—

'Twas ocean's swells and falls; For though this vault of sin and fear Was to the sounding surge so near, A tempest there you scarce could hear, So massive were the walls. At length an effort sent apart The blood that curdled to her heart,

And light came to her eye, And colour dawned upon her cheek, A hectic and a fluttered streak, Like that left on the Cheviot peak 150

By autumn's stormy sky; And when her silence broke at length, Still as she spoke she gathered strength,

And armed herself to bear. It was a fearful sight to see Such high resolve and constancy

In form so soft and fair.

Constance revealed the whole baseness of her lover in making false charges against de Wilton, and in abandoning herself. Finally, after denouncing the bigotry and cruelty of her judges, and foretelling the speedy destruction of their power, she was led to her doom, expressing no remorse for her own plot against Clara, but leaving behind her documents which established the perfidy of Marmion.

Canto II

Meantime, Marmion proceeded on an embassy from King Henry to the court of James IV of Scotland to inquire why that sovereign was raising so vast an army in the neighbourhood of his capital. At Norham upon the Tweed, the last English post upon his road, the valiant but treacherous knight asked his host, Sir Hugh the Heron, to furnish him with a guide to the Scottish court; and after some deliberation a holy palmer was introduced for this purpose, who guided Marmion in silence across the border to the village of Gifford in East Lothian, where the company took up its quarters at a country inn. Here the Palmer's thin, dark visage and stern encountering glance disturbed the soul of Marmion, and reduced the whole band to silence. To relieve this the knight called on one of his squires for a song, but was only plunged into deeper gloom when the youth selected a favourite air of Constance's, and sang of the shameful death that is decreed to those who are faithless in love.

High minds of native pride and force Most deeply feel thy pangs, Remorse! Fear, for their scourge, mean villains have, Thou art the torturer of the brave! Yet fatal strength they boast to steel Their minds to bear the wounds they feel, Even while they writhe beneath the smart Of civil conflict in the heart.

I5i

For soon Lord Marmion raised his head, And, smiling, to Fitz-Eustace said— " Is it not strange, that, as ye sung, Seemed in mine ear a death-peal rung, Such as in nunneries they toll For some departing sister's soul ?

Say, what may this portend ? " Then first the Palmer's silence broke (The livelong day he had not spoke) :

" The death rf a dear friend." Marmion, whose steady heart and eye Ne'er changed in worst extremity; Marmion, whose soul could scantly brook Even from his king a haughty look; Whose accent of command controlled, In camps, the boldest of the bold— Thought, look, and utterance failed him now, Fall'n was his glance, and flushed his brow;

For either in the tone, Or something in the Palmer's look, So full upon his conscience strook,

That answer he found none. Thus oft it haps, that when within They shrink at sense of secret sin,

A feather daunts the brave; A fool's wise speech confounds the wise, And proudest princes vail their eyes

Before their meanest slave. Well might he falter! By his aid Was Constance Beverley betrayed. Not that he augured of the doom Which on the living closed the tomb: His conscience slept—he deemed her well, And safe secured in distant cell; But, wakened by her favourite lay, And that strange Palmer's boding say, That fell so ominous and drear 152

Full on the object of his fear, To aid remorse's venomed throes, Dark tales of convent-vengeance rose; And Constance, late betrayed and scorned, All lovely on his soul returned; Lovely as when, at treacherous call, She left her convent's peaceful wall, Crimsoned with shame, with terror mute, Dreading alike escape, pursuit, Till love, victorious o'er alarms, Hid fears and blushes in his arms.