As over Whitby’s towers they sail, And, sinking down, with flutterings faint, They do their homage to the saint.
XIV.
Nor did Saint Cuthbert’s daughters fail, To vie with these in holy tale; His body’s resting-place, of old, How oft their patron changed, they told; How, when the rude Dane burn’d their pile, The monks fled forth from Holy Isle;O’er northern mountain, marsh, and moor, From sea to sea, from shore to shore, Seven years Saint Cuthbert’s corpse they bore. They rested them in fair Melrose; But though, alive, he loved it well, Not there his relics might repose; For, wondrous tale to tell! In his stone-coffin forth he rides, A ponderous bark for river tides, Yet light as gossamer it glides, Downward to Tilmouth cell. Nor long was his abiding there, Far southward did the saint repair; Chester-le-Street, and Rippon, saw His holy corpse, ere Wardilaw Hail’d him with joy and fear; And, after many wanderings past, He chose his lordly seat at last, Where his cathedral, huge and vast, Looks down upon the Wear;There, deep in Durham’s Gothic shade, His relics are in secret laid; But none may know the place, Save of his holiest servants three, Deep sworn to solemn secrecy, Who share that wondrous grace.
XV.
Who may his miracles declare! Even Scotland’s dauntless king, and heir, (Although with them they led Galwegians, wild as ocean’s gale, And Lodon’s knights, all sheathed in mail, And the bold men of Teviotdale,) Before his standard fled.‘Twas he, to vindicate his reign, Edged Alfred’s falchion on the Dane, And turn’d the Conqueror back again, When, with his Norman bowyer band, He came to waste Northumberland.
XVI.
But fain Saint Hilda’s nuns would learn If, on a rock, by Lindisfarne, Saint Cuthbert sits, and toils to frame The sea-born beads that bear his name: Such tales had Whitby’s fishers told, And said they might his shape behold, And hear his anvil sound; A deaden’d clang,-a huge dim form, Seen but, and heard, when gathering storm And night were closing round.But this, as tale of idle fame,
