V.

Nought say I here of Sister Clare,
Save this, that she was young and fair;
As yet a novice unprofess’d,
Lovely and gentle, but distress’d. 90
She was betroth’d to one now dead,
Or worse, who had dishonour’d fled. 
Her kinsmen bade her give her hand
To one, who loved her for her land: 
Herself, almost broken-hearted now, 95
Was bent to take the vestal vow,
And shroud, within Saint Hilda’s gloom,
Her blasted hopes and wither’d bloom.

VI.

She sate upon the galley’s prow,
And seem’d to mark the waves below; 100
Nay, seem’d, so fix’d her look and eye,
To count them as they glided by. 
She saw them not—­’twas seeming all—­
Far other scene her thoughts recall,—­
A sun-scorch’d desert, waste and bare, 105
Nor waves, nor breezes, murmur’d there;
There saw she, where some careless hand
O’er a dead corpse had heap’d the sand,
To hide it till the jackals come,
To tear it from the scanty tomb.—­ 110
See what a woful look was given,
As she raised up her eyes to heaven!

VII.

Lovely, and gentle, and distress’d—­
These charms might tame the fiercest breast: 
Harpers have sung, and poets told, 115
That he, in fury uncontroll’d,
The shaggy monarch of the wood,
Before a virgin, fair and good,
Hath pacified his savage mood. 
But passions in the human frame, 120
Oft put the lion’s rage to shame: 
And jealousy, by dark intrigue,
With sordid avarice in league,
Had practised with their bowl and knife,
Against the mourner’s harmless life. 125
This crime was charged ’gainst those who lay
Prison’d in Cuthbert’s islet grey.

VIII.

And now the vessel skirts the strand
Of mountainous Northumberland;
Towns, towers, and halls, successive rise, 130
And catch the nuns’ delighted eyes. 
Monk-Wearmouth soon behind them lay,
And Tynemouth’s priory and bay;
They mark’d, amid her trees, the hall
Of lofty Seaton-Delaval; 135
They saw the Blythe and Wansbeck floods
Rush to the sea through sounding woods;
They pass’d the tower of Widderington,
Mother of many a valiant son;
At Coquet-isle their beads they tell 140
To the good Saint who own’d the cell;
Then did the Alne attention claim,
And Warkworth, proud of Percy’s name;
And next, they cross’d themselves, to hear
The whitening breakers sound so near, 145
There, boiling through the rocks, they roar,
On Dunstanborough’s cavern’d shore;
Thy tower, proud Bamborough, mark’d they there,
King Ida’s castle, huge and square,
From its tall rock look grimly down, 150
And on the swelling ocean frown;
Then from the coast they bore away,
And reach’d the Holy Island’s bay.