Page:Marmion - Walter Scott (ed. Bayne, 1889).pdf/73

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CANTO II.
43
95Herself, almost broken-hearted now,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,100And seem'd to mark the waves below;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,—105A sun-scorch'd desert, waste and bare,Nor waves, nor breezes, murmur'd there;There saw she, where some careless handO'er a dead corpse had heap'd the sand,To hide it till the jackals come,110To tear it from the scanty tomb.—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:115Harpers have sung, and poets told,That he, in fury uncontroll'd,The shaggy monarch of the wood,Before a virgin, fair and good,Hath pacified his savage mood.120But passions in the human frame,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,125Against the mourner's harmless life.This crime was charged 'gainst those who layPrison'd in Cuthbert's islet grey.
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