Looks down upon the Wear;
There, deep in Durham’s Gothic shade, 280
His relics are in secret laid;
  But none may know the place,
Save of his holiest servants three,
Deep sworn to solemn secrecy,
  Who share that wondrous grace. 285

XV.

Who may his miracles declare! 
Even Scotland’s dauntless king, and heir,
  (Although with them they led
Galwegians, wild as ocean’s gale,
And Lodon’s knights, all sheathed in mail, 290
And the bold men of Teviotdale,)
  Before his standard fled. 
’Twas he, to vindicate his reign,
Edged Alfred’s falchion on the Dane,
And turn’d the Conqueror back again, 295
When, with his Norman bowyer band,
He came to waste Northumberland.

XVI.

But fain Saint Hilda’s nuns would learn
If, on a rock, by Lindisfarne,
Saint Cuthbert sits, and toils to frame 300
The sea-born beads that bear his name: 
Such tales had Whitby’s fishers told,
And said they might his shape behold,
  And hear his anvil sound;
A deaden’d clang,—­a huge dim form, 305
Seen but, and heard, when gathering storm
  And night were closing round. 
But this, as tale of idle fame,
The nuns of Lindisfarne disclaim.

XVII.

While round the fire such legends go, 310
Far different was the scene of woe,
Where, in a secret aisle beneath,
Council was held of life and death. 
  It was more dark and lone that vault,
    Than the worst dungeon cell:  315
  Old Colwulf built it, for his fault,
    In penitence to dwell,
When he, for cowl and beads, laid down
The Saxon battle-axe and crown. 
This den, which, chilling every sense 320
  Of feeling, hearing, sight,
Was call’d the Vault of Penitence,
  Excluding air and light,
Was, by the prelate Sexhelm, made
A place of burial for such dead, 325
As, having died in mortal sin,
Might not be laid the church within. 
’Twas now a place of punishment;
Whence if so loud a shriek were sent,
  As reach’d the upper air, 330
The hearers bless’d themselves, and said,
The spirits of the sinful dead
  Bemoan’d their torments there.

XVIII.

But though, in the monastic pile,
Did of this penitential aisle 335
  Some vague tradition go,
Few only, save the Abbot, knew
Where the place lay; and still more few
Were those, who had from him the clew
  To that dread vault to go.