A pious priest might the Abbot seem,

He had swayed the crozier well;

But what was the theme of the Abbot's dream, The Abbot were loath to tell.

Companionless, for å mile or more
He traced the windings of the shore.
Oh, beauteous is that river still,
As it winds by many a sloping hill,
And many a dim o'erarching grove,
And many a flat and sunny cove,
And terraced lawns, whose bright arcades
The honeysuckle sweetly shades,

And rocks, whose very crags seem bowers,
So gay they are with grass and flowers!
But the Abbot was thinking of scenery
About as much, in sooth,

As a lover thinks of constancy,

Or an advocate of truth.

He did not mark how the skies in wrath
Grew dark above his head;

He did not mark how the mossy path

Grew damp beneath his tread;

And nearer he came, and still more near,

To a pool, in whose recess

The water had slept for many a year,

Unchanged and motionless;

From the river-stream it spread away
The space of a half a rood;

The surface had the hue of clay

And the scent of human blood;

The trees and the herbs that round it grew
Were venomous and foul,

And the birds that through the bushes flew
Were the vulture and the owl;

The water was as dark and rank

As ever a Company pumped,

And the perch, that was netted and laid on the bank,

Grew rotten while it jumped;

And bold was he who thither came

At midnight, man or boy,

For the place was cursed with an evil name,

And that name was "The Devil's Decoy!"

The Abbot was weary as abbot could be,
And he sat down to rest on the stump of a tree:
When suddenly rose a dismal tone,-

Was it a song, or was it a moan?-
"O ho! O ho!

Above,-below,

Lightly and brightly they glide and go!
The hungry and keen on the top are leaping,
The lazy and fat in the depths are sleeping;
Fishing is fine when the pool is muddy,
Broiling is rich when the coals are ruddy!"—
In a monstrous fright, by the murky light,
He looked to the left and he looked to the right,

And what was the vision close before him, That flung such a sudden stupor o'er him? 'Twas a sight to make the hair uprise,

And the life-blood colder run:

The startled Priest struck both his thighs,
And the abbey-clock struck one!

All alone, by the side of the pool,
A tall man sat on a three-legged stool,
Kicking his heels on the dewy sod,
And putting in order his reel and rod;
Red were the rags his shoulders wore,
And a high red cap on his head he bore;
His arms and his legs were long and bare;
And two or three locks of long red hair
Were tossing about his scraggy neck,
Like a tattered flag o'er a splitting wreck.
It might be time, or it might be trouble,
Had bent that stout back nearly double,
Sunk in their deep and hollow sockets
That blazing couple of Congreve rockets,
And shrunk and shrivelled that tawny skin,
Till it hardly covered the bones within.
The line the Abbot saw him throw
Had been fashioned and formed long ages ago
And the hands that worked his foreign vest
Long ages ago had gone to their rest:
You would have sworn, as you looked on them,
He had fished in the flood with Ham and Shem!

And a small table was encumbered
With paintings, and an ivory lute,
And sweetmeats, and delicious fruit.
Sir Rudolph lost no time in praising;
For he, I should have said, was gazing,
In attitude extremely tragic,
Upon a sight of stranger magic;

A sight, which, seen at such a season,
Might well astonish Mistress Reason,
And scare Dame Wisdom from her fences
Of rules and maxims, moods and tenses.

Beneath a crimson canopy,

A lady, passing fair, was lying;
Deep sleep was on her gentle eye,
And in her slumber she was sighing
Bewitching sighs, such sighs as say

Beneath the moonlight, to a lover, Things which the coward tongue by day

Would not, for all the world, discover:
She lay like a shape of sculptured stone,
So pale, so tranquil :—she had thrown,
For the warm evening's sultriness,
The broidered coverlet aside;

And nothing was there to deck or hide
The glory of her loveliness,

But a scarf of gauze so light and thin
You might see beneath the dazzling skin,

And watch the purple streamlets go

Through the valleys of white and stainless snow,
Or here and there a wayward tress,
Which wandered out with vast assurance
From the pearls that kept the rest in durance,
And fluttered about, as if 'twould try
To lure a zephyr from the sky.

"Bertha !"-large drops of anguish came
On Rudolph's brow, as he breathed that name,-
"O fair and false one, wake, and fear!
I, the betrayed, the scorned, am here."
The eye moved not from its dull eclipse,
The voice came not from the fast-shut lips:
No matter! well that gazer knew
The tone of bliss, and the eyes of blue.

Sir Rudolph hid his burning face

With both his hands, for a minute's space,
And all his frame, in awful fashion,
Was shaken by some sudden passion.

What guilty fancies o'er him ran?—

Oh! Pity will be slow to guess them;

And never, save to the holy man,

Did good Sir Rudolph e'er confess them.

But soon his spirit you might deem

Came forth from the shade of the fearful dream; His cheek, though pale, was calm again,

And he spoke in peace, though he spoke in pain: