Though, vain of her religious sway, She loved to see her maids obey, Yet nothing stern was she in cell, And the nuns loved their Abbess well.Sad was this voyage to the dame; Summon’d to Lindisfame, she came, There, with Saint Cuthbert’s Abbot old, And Tynemouth’s Prioress, to hold A chapter of Saint Benedict, For inquisition stern and strict, On two apostates from the faith, And, if need were, to doom to death.
V.
Nought say I here of Sister Clare, Save this, that she was young and fair; As yet a novice unprofess’d, Lovely and gentle, but distress’d.She was betroth’d to one now dead, Or worse, who had dishonour’d fled. Her kinsmen bade her give her hand To one, who loved her for her land: Herself, 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, And 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,- A sun-scorch’d desert, waste and bare, Nor waves, nor breezes, murmur’d there; There saw she, where some careless hand O’er a dead corpse had heap’d the sand, To hide it till the jackals come, To 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: Harpers 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.But 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, Against the mourner’s harmless life. This crime was charged ‘gainst those who lay Prison’d in Cuthbert’s islet grey.
