* * * * *

The silver light, so pale and faint,
Shew’d many a prophet, and many a saint,
Whose image on the glass was dyed;
Full in the midst, his Cross of Red
Triumphal Michael brandished,
And trampled the Apostate’s pride. 
The moon beam kiss’d the holy pane,
And threw on the pavement a bloody stain.

* * * * *

They sate them down on a marble stone,—­
(A Scottish monarch slept below;)
Thus spoke the Monk, in solemn tone—­
“I was not always a man of woe;
For Paynim countries I have trod,
And fought beneath the Cross of God: 
Now, strange to my eyes thine arms appear. 
And their iron clang sounds strange to my ear.

* * * * *

“In these far climes it was my lot
To meet the wondrous Michael Scott;

* * * * *

Some of his skill he taught to me;
And, Warrior, I could say to thee
The words that cleft Eildon hills in three,
And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone: 
But to speak them were a deadly sin;
And for having but thought them my heart within,
A treble penance must be done.

* * * * *

“When Michael lay on his dying bed,
His conscience was awakened
He bethought him of his sinful deed,
And he gave me a sign to come with speed. 
I was in Spain when the morning rose,
But I stood by his bed ere evening close. 
The words may not again be said
That he spoke to me, on death-bed laid;
They would rend this Abbaye’s massy nave,
And pile it in heaps above his grave.

* * * * *

“I swore to bury his Mighty Book,
That never mortal might therein look;
And never to tell where it was hid,
Save at his Chief of Branksome’s need: 
And when that need was past and o’er,
Again the volume to restore. 
I buried him on St. Michael’s night,
When the bell toll’d one, and the moon was bright,
And I dug his chamber among the dead,
When the floor of the chancel was stained red,
That his patron’s cross might over him wave,
And scare the fiends from the Wizard’s grave.

* * * * *

“It was a night of woe and dread,
When Michael in the tomb I laid! 
Strange sounds along the chancel pass’d,
The banners waved without a blast”—­
Still spoke the Monk, when the bell toll’d one!—­
I tell you, that a braver man
Than William of Deloraine, good at need,
Against a foe ne’er spurr’d a steed;
Yet somewhat was he chill’d with dread,
And his hair did bristle upon his head.

* * * * *

“Lo, Warrior! now, the Cross of Red
Points to the grave of the mighty dead;
Within it burns a wondrous light,
To chase the spirits that love the night: 
That lamp shall burn unquenchably,
Until the eternal doom shall be.”—­
Slow moved the Monk to the broad flag-stone,
Which the bloody Cross was traced upon: