A heap of withered boughs was piled, Of juniper and rowan wild, Mingled with shivers from the oak, Rent by the lightning's recent stroke. Brian, the Hermit, by it stood, Barefooted, in his frock and hood. His grizzled beard and matted hair Obscured a visage of despair; His naked arms and legs, seamed o'er, The scars of frantic penance bore. That monk, of savage form and face, The impending danger of his race Had drawn from deepest solitude, Far in Benharrow's bosom rude. Not his the mien of Christian priest, But Druid's, from the grave released, Whose hardened heart and eye might brook On human sacrifice to look; And much, 'twas said, of heathen lore Mixed in the charms he muttered o'er. The hallowed creed gave only worse And deadlier emphasis of curse; No peasant sought that Hermit's prayer, His cave the pilgrim shunned with care, The eager huntsman knew his bound, And in mid chase called off his hound; Or if, in lonely glen or strath, The desert-dweller met his path, He prayed, and signed the cross between, While terror took devotion's mien.
V
Of Brian's birth strange tales were told. His mother watched a midnight fold, Built deep within a dreary glen, Where scattered lay the bones of men In some forgotten battle slain, And bleached by drifting wind and rain. It might have tamed a warrior's heart, To view such mockery of his art! The knot-grass fettered there the hand Which once could burst an iron band; Beneath the broad and ample bone, That bucklered heart to fear unknown, A feeble and a timorous guest, The fieldfare framed her lowly nest; There the slow blindworm left his slime On the fleet limbs that mocked at time; And there, too, lay the leader's skull, Still wreathed with chaplet, flushed and full, For heath-bell with her purple bloom Supplied the bonnet and the plume. All night, in this sad glen, the maid Sat, shrouded in her mantle's shade: She said no shepherd sought her side, No hunter's hand her snood untied; Yet ne'er again to braid her hair The virgin snood did Alice wear; Gone was her maiden glee and sport, Her maiden girdle all too short, Nor sought she, from that fatal night, Or holy church or blessed rite, But locked her secret in her breast, And died in travail, unconfessed.
