That the abbot fell on his face, and fainted,
And deemed his spirit was half-way sainted.

Sounds seemed dropping from the skies,
Stifled whispers, smothered sighs,
And the breath of vernal gales,
And the voice of nightingales:
But the nightingales were mute,
Envious, when an unseen lute
Shaped the music of its chords
Into passion's thrilling words:

"Smile, lady, smile!-I will not set
Upon my brow the coronet,
Till thou wilt gather roses white
To wear around its gems of light.
Smile, lady, smile!-I will not see
Rivers and Hastings bend the knee,
Till those bewitching lips of thine
Will bid me rise in bliss from mine.
Smile, lady, smile!-for who would win
A loveless throne through guilt and sin?
Or who would reign o'er vale and hill,
If woman's heart were rebel still?"

One jerk, and there a lady lay,

A lady wondrous fair;

But the rose of her lip had faded away,

And her cheek was as white and as cold as clay,

And torn was her raven hair.

"Ah, ah!" said the fisher, in merry guise,

"Her gallant was hooked before;"

And the abbot heaved some piteous sighs,

For oft he had blessed those deep blue eyes,
The eyes of Mistress Shore !

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,

As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
Many the cunning sportsman tried,

Many he flung with a frown aside;
A minstrel's harp, and a miser's chest,
A hermit's cowl, and a baron's crest,
Jewels of lustre, robes of price,
Tomes of heresy, loaded dice,

And golden cups of the brightest wine

That ever was pressed from the Burgundy vine;
There was a perfume of sulphur and nitre,

As he came at last to a bishop's mitre!
From top to toe the abbot shook,
As the fisherman armed his golden hook;
And awfully were his features wrought
By some dark dream or wakened thought.
Look how the fearful felon gazes

On the scaffold his country's vengeance raises,
When the lips are cracked and the jaws are dry
With the thirst which only in death shall die :
Mark the mariner's frenzied frown

As the swaling wherry settles down,

When peril has numbed the sense and will, Though the hand and the foot may struggle still: Wilder far was the abbot's glance,

Deeper far was the abbot's trance:

Fixed as a monument, still as air,

He bent no knee, and he breathed no prayer;
But he signed-he knew not why or how-
The sign of the Cross on his clammy brow.

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he stalked away with his iron box.

"Oh, ho! Oh, ho!

The cock doth crow;

It is time for the fisher to rise and go.

Fair luck to the abbot, fair luck to the shrine!

He hath gnawed in twain my choicest line;

Let him swim to the north, let him swim to the south, The abbot will carry my hook in his mouth!"

The abbot had preached for many years,

With as clear articulation

As ever was heard in the House of Peers
Against Emancipation;

His words had made battalions quake,

Had roused the zeal of martyrs;

He kept the court an hour awake,
And the king himself three quarters:

But ever, from that hour, 'tis said,
He stammered and he stuttered,

As if an axe went through his head
With every word he uttered.

He stuttered o'er blessing, he stuttered o'er ban,

He stuttered, drunk or dry;

And none but he and the fisherman

Could tell the reason why!

THE LEGEND OF THE HAUNTED TREE.

"DEEP is the bliss of the belted knight,

When he kisses at dawn the silken glove,
And rides, in his glittering armor dight,
To shiver a lance for his Lady-love!

"Lightly he couches the beaming spear;

His mistress sits with her maidens by, Watching the speed of his swift career,

With a whispered prayer and a murmured sigh.

"Far from me is the gazing throng,

The blazoned shield, and the nodding plume; Nothing is mine but a worthless song,

A joyless life, and a nameless tomb."

"Nay, dearest Wilfrid, lay like this

On such an eve is much amiss:
Our mirth beneath the new May moon
Should be echoed by a livelier tune.
What need to thee of mail and crest,
Of foot in stirrup, spear in rest?
Over far mountains and deep seas,

Earth hath no fairer fields than these;

And who, in Beauty's gaudiest bowers,
Can love thee with more love than ours?"

The minstrel turned with a moody look

From that sweet scene of guiltless glee; From the old who talked beside the brook,

And the young who danced beneath the tree: Coldly he shrank from the gentle maid,

From the chiding look and the pleading tone; And he passed from the old elm's hoary shade, And followed the forest path alone.

One little sigh, one pettish glance,

And the girl comes back to her playmates now, And takes her place in the merry dance, With a slower step and a sadder brow.

"My soul is sick," saith the way ward boy,
"Of the peasant's grief, and the peasant's joy;
I cannot breathe on from day to day,

Like the insects which our wise men say

In the crevice of the cold rock dwell,

Till their shape is the shape of their dungeon's cell;

In the dull repose of our changeless life,

I long for passion, I long for strife,

As in the calm the mariner sighs
For rushing waves and groaning skies.
Oh for the lists, the lists of fame!
Oh for the herald's glad acclaim;

For floating pennon and prancing steed,
And Beauty's wonder at Manhood's deed!"