Page:Marmion - Walter Scott (ed. Bayne, 1889).pdf/74

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MARMION.
VIII.And now the vessel skirts the strandOf mountainous Northumberland;130Towns, towers, and halls, successive rise,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 hall135Of lofty Seaton-Delaval;They saw the Blythe and Wansbeck floodsRush to the sea through sounding woods;They pass'd the tower of Widderington,Mother of many a valiant son;140At Coquet-isle their beads they tellTo 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 hear145The whitening breakers sound so near,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,150From its tall rock look grimly down,And on the swelling ocean frown;Then from the coast they bore away,And reach'd the Holy Island's bay.
IX.The tide did now its flood-mark gain,155And girdled in the Saint's domain:For, with the flow and ebb, its styleVaries from continent to isle;Dry-shod, o'er sands, twice every day,The pilgrims to the shrine find way;160Twice every day, the waves effaceOf staves and sandall'd feet the trace.
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