Marmion

And now the vessel skirts the strand 
Of mountainous Northumberland; 
Towns, 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 hall 
Of lofty Seaton-Delaval;                     
They saw the Blythe and Wansbeck floods 
Rush to the sea through sounding woods; 
They pass’d the tower of Widderington, 
Mother of many a valiant son;

At Coquet-isle their beads they tell       
To 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 hear 
The 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, 
From 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, 
And girdled in the Saint’s domain:      
For, with the flow and ebb, its style 
Varies from continent to isle;

Dry-shod, o’er sands, twice every day, 
The pilgrims to the shrine find way; 
Twice every day, the waves efface 
Of staves and sandall’d feet the trace.

As to the port the galley flew, 
Higher and higher rose to view 
The Castle with its battled walls, 
The ancient Monastery’s halls,      
A solemn, huge, and dark-red pile, 
Placed on the margin of the isle.

X.

In Saxon strength that Abbey frown’d, 
With massive arches broad and round, 
  That rose alternate, row and row,     
  On ponderous columns, short and low, 
    Built ere the art was known, 
  By pointed aisle, and shafted stalk, 
  The arcades of an alley’d walk 
    To emulate in stone.            

On the deep walls, the heathen Dane 
Had pour’d his impious rage in vain; 
And needful was such strength to these, 
Exposed to the tempestuous seas, 
Scourged by the winds’ eternal sway, 
Open to rovers fierce as they, 
Which could twelve hundred years withstand 
Winds, waves, and northern pirates’ hand.

Not but that portions of the pile, 
Rebuilded in a later style,            
Show’d where the spoiler’s hand had been; 
Not but the wasting sea-breeze keen 
Had worn the pillar’s carving quaint, 
And moulder’d in his niche the saint, 
And rounded, with consuming power,