St.Clair, who feasting high at Home,
Had with that lord to battle come.
Harald was born where restless seas
Race round the storm-swept Orcades;
Where erst St.Clairs held princely sway
O'er isle and islet, strait and bay; -
Still nods their palace to its fall,
Thy pride and sorrow, fair Kirkwall !
Thence oft he marked fierce Petland rave,
As if grim Odin rode her wave;
And watched the whilst with visage pale,
And throbbing heart, the struggling sail;
For all of wonderful and wild
Had rapture for that lonely childe.
And much of wild and wonderful
In these rude isles might fancy cull;
For thither came, in times afar,
Stern Lochlin's sons of roving war,
The Norsemen, trained to spoil and blood,
Skilled to prepare the raven's food;
Kings of the main their leaders brave,
Their barks the dragons of the wave,
And there in many a stormy vale,
The Scald had told his wondrous tale;
And many a Runic column high
Had witnessed grim idolatry.
And thus had Harald, in his youth,
Learned many a Saga's rime uncouth, -
Of that Sea-Snake, tremendous curled,
Whose monstrous circle girds the world;
Of those dread Maids, whose hideous yell
Maddens the battle's bloody swell;
Of Chiefs, who, guided through the gloom
By the pale death-lights of the tomb,
Ransacked the graves of warriors old,
Their falchions wrenched from corpses hold,
Waked the deaf tomb with war's alarms,
And bade the dead arise to arms !
With war and wonder all on flame,
To Roslin's bowers young Harald came,
Where, by sweet glen and greenwood tree,
He learned a milder minstrelsy;
Yet something of the Northern spell
Mixed with the softer numbers well.
O listen! listen ladies gay !
No haughty feat of arms I tell;
Soft is the note, and sad the lay,
That mourns the lovely Rosabelle.
Moor, moor the barge, ye gallant crew!
And, gentle ladye, deign to stay!
Rest thee in Castle Ravensheuch,
Nor tempt the stormy firth to-day.
The blackening wave is edged with white:
To inch and rock the sea-mews fly;
The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite,
Whose screams forbode that wreck is nigh.
Last night the gifted Seer dill view
A wet shroud swathed round ladye gay;
Then stay thee, Fair, in Raveusheuch;
Why cross the gloomy firth to-day ?"
'Tis not because Lord Llndesay's heir
To-night at Roslin leads the ball,
But that my ladye-mother there
Sits lonely in her castle-hall,
'Tis not because the ring they ride,
And Lindesay at the ring rides well;
But that my sire the wine will chide
If 'tis not filled by Rosabelle"
O'er Roslin all that dreary night
A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam;
'Twas broader than the watch fire's light.
And redder than the bright moon- beam.
It glared on Roslin's castled rock,
It ruddied all the copse-wood glen;
'Twas seen from Dryden's groves of oak,
And seen from caverned Hawthornden.
Seemed all on fire that chapel proud,
Where Roslins chiefs uncoffined lie,
Each baron, for a sable shroud,
Sheathed in his iron panoply.
Seemed all on fire within, around,
Deep sacristy and altar's pale;
Shone every pillar foliage-bound,
And glimmered all the dead men's mail.
Blazed battlement and pinnet high,
Blazed every rose-carved buttress fair
So still they blaze, when fate is nigh
The lordly line of high St.Clair.
There are twenty of Roslin's barons bold
Lie buried within that proud chapelle;
Each one the holy vault doth hold -
But the sea holds lovely Rosabelle !
And each Saint Clair was buried there,
With candle, with book, and with knell;
But the sea-caves rung, and the wild winds sung
The dirge of lovelv Rosabelle.