Her mantle rich, whose borders, round, A deep and fretted broidery bound, In golden foldings sought the ground; Of holy ornament, alone Remain’d a cross with ruby stone; And often did she look On that which in her hand she bore, With velvet bound, and broider’d o’er, Her breviary book. In such a place, so lone, so grim, At dawning pale, or twilight dim, It fearful would have been To meet a form so richly dress’d, With book in hand, and cross on breast, And such a woeful mien.Fitz-Eustace, loitering with his bow, To practise on the gull and crow, Saw her, at distance, gliding slow, And did by Mary swear,- Some love-lorn Fay she might have been, Or, in Romance, some spell-bound Queen; For ne’er, in work-day world, was seen A form so witching fair.
IV.
Once walking thus, at evening tide, It chanced a gliding sail she spied, And, sighing, thought-‘The Abbess, there, Perchance, does to her home repair;Her peaceful rule, where Duty, free, Walks hand in hand with Charity; Where oft Devotion’s tranced glow Can such a glimpse of heaven bestow, That the enraptured sisters see High vision, and deep mystery; The very form of Hilda fair, Hovering upon the sunny air, And smiling on her votaries’ prayer.O! wherefore, to my duller eye, Did still the Saint her form deny!Was it, that, sear’d by sinful scorn, My heart could neither melt nor burn? Or lie my warm affections low, With him, that taught them first to glow?Yet, gentle Abbess, well I knew, To pay thy kindness grateful due, And well could brook the mild command, That ruled thy simple maiden band.How different now! condemn’d to bide My doom from this dark tyrant’s pride.-But Marmion has to learn, ere long, That constant mind, and hate of wrong, Descended to a feeble girl, From Red De Clare, stout Gloster’s Earl: Of such a stem, a sapling weak, He ne’er shall bend, although he break.
V.
‘But see!-what makes this armour here?’- For in her path there lay Targe, corslet, helm;-she view’d them near.-
