“The distant Tweed is heard, to rave,
  And the owlet to hoot o’er the dead man’s grave.”

“We hear nothing of the Tweed, at any rate,” said we; “that must be a poetic license.”  But now at midnight, as we walked silently through the mouldering aisles, the brawl of the Tweed was so distinctly heard that it seemed as if it was close by the old, lonely pile; nor can any term describe the sound more exactly than the word “rave,” which the poet has chosen.  It was the precise accuracy of this little item of description which made me feel as if Scott must have been here in the night.  I walked up into the old chancel, and sat down where William of Deloraine and the monk sat, on the Scottish monarch’s tomb, and thought over the words

  “Strange sounds along the chancel passed,
  And banners wave without a blast;
  Still spake the monk when the bell tolled one.”

And while we were there the bell tolled twelve.

And then we went to Michael Scott’s grave, and we looked through the east oriel, with its

  “Slender shafts of shapely stone,
  By foliage tracery combined.”

The fanciful outlines showed all the more distinctly for the entire darkness within, and the gloaming moonlight without.  The tall arches seemed higher in their dimness, and vaster than they did in the daytime.  “Hark!” said I; “what’s that?” as we heard a rustling and flutter of wings in the ivy branches over our heads.  Only a couple of rooks, whose antiquarian slumbers were disturbed by the unwonted noise there at midnight, and who rose and flew away, rattling down some fragments of the ruin as they went.  It was somewhat odd, but I could not help fancying, what if these strange, goblin rooks were the spirits of old monks coming back to nestle and brood among their ancient cloisters!  Rooks are a ghostly sort of bird.  I think they were made on purpose to live in old yew trees and ivy, as much as yew trees and ivy were to grow round old churches and abbeys.  If we once could get inside of a rook’s skull, to find out what he is thinking of, I’ll warrant that we should know a great deal more about these old buildings than we do now.  I should not wonder if there were long traditionary histories handed down from one generation of rooks to another, and that these are what they are talking about when we think they are only chattering.  I imagine I see the whole black fraternity the next day, sitting, one on a gargoyle, one on a buttress, another on a shrine, gossiping over the event of our nightly visit.

We walked up and down the long aisles, and groped out into the cloisters; and then I thought, to get the full ghostliness of the thing, we would go up the old, ruined staircase into the long galleries, that

  “Midway thread the abbey wall.”

We got about half way up, when there came into our faces one of those sudden, passionate puffs of mist and rain which Scotch clouds seem to have the faculty of getting up at a minute’s notice.  Whish! came the wind in our faces, like the rustling of a whole army of spirits down the staircase; whereat we all tumbled back promiscuously on to each other, and concluded we would not go up.  In fact we had done the thing, and so we went home; and I dreamed of arches, and corbels, and gargoyles all night.  And so, farewell to Melrose Abbey.