He pointed to a secret nook;
An iron bar the Warrior took;
And the Monk made a sign with his wither’d hand,
The grave’s huge portal to expand.

* * * * *

With beating heart to the task he went;
His sinewy frame o’er the grave-stone bent;
With bar of iron heaved amain,
Till the toil-drops fell from his brows, like rain. 
It was by dint of passing strength,
That he moved the massy stone at length. 
I would you had been there, to see
How the light broke forth so gloriously,
Stream’d upward to the chancel roof,
And through the galleries far aloof! 
No earthly flame blazed e’er so bright: 
It shone like heaven’s own blessed light,

    And, issuing from the tomb,

Show’d the Monk’s cowl, and visage pale,
Danced on the dark-brow’d Warrior’s mail,
And kiss’d his waving plume.

* * * * *

Before their eyes the Wizard lay,
As if he had not been dead a day. 
His hoary beard in silver roll’d. 
He seem’d some seventy winters old;
A palmer’s amice wrapp’d him round,
With a wrought Spanish baldric bound,
Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea: 
His left hand held his Book of Might;
A silver cross was in his right;
The lamp was placed beside his knee: 
High and majestic was his look,
At which the fellest fiends had shook. 
And all unruffled was his face: 
They trusted his soul had gotten grace.

* * * * *

Often had William of Deloraine
Rode through the battle’s bloody plain,
And trampled down the warriors slain,
And neither known remorse nor awe;
Yet now remorse and awe he own’d;
His breath came thick, his head swam round. 
When this strange scene of death he saw. 
Bewilder’d and unnerved he stood. 
And the priest pray’d fervently and loud: 
With eyes averted prayed he;
He might not endure the sight to see. 
Of the man he had loved so brotherly.

* * * * *

And when the priest his death-prayer had pray’d,
Thus unto Deloraine he said:—­
“Now, speed thee what thou hast to do,
Or, Warrior, we may dearly rue;

For those, thou may’st not look upon,
Are gathering fast round the yawning stone!”—­
Then Deloraine, in terror, took
From the cold hand the Mighty Book,
With iron clasp’d, and with iron bound: 
He thought, as he took it, the dead man frown’d;
But the glare of the sepulchral light,
Perchance, had dazzled the Warrior’s sight.

* * * * *