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XIV.

"When Michael lay on his dying bed,

His conscience was awakened;

He bethought him of his sinful deed,
And he gave me a sign to come with speed:
I was in Spain when the morning rose,
But I stood by his bed ere evening close.
The words may not again be said,

That he spoke to me, on death-bed laid;
They would rend this Abbaye's massy nave,

And pile it in heaps above his grave.

XV.

"I swore to bury his Mighty Book,
That never mortal might therein look ;
And never to tell where it was hid,
Save at his chief of Branksome's need;
And when that need was past and o'er,

Again the volume to restore.

I buried him on St. Michael's night,

When the bell tolled One, and the moon was

bright;

And I dug his chamber among the dead,

When the floor of the chancel was stained red,

That his patron's Cross might over him wave,

And scare the fiends from the Wizard's grave.

XVI.

"It was a night of woe and dread, When Michael in the tomb I laid!

Strange sounds along the chancel past,

The banners waved without a blast,”

Still spoke the Monk, when the bell tolled ONE !—

I tell you, that a braver man

Than William of Deloraine, good at need,

Against a foe ne'er spurred a steed;

Yet somewhat was he chilled with dread,
And his hair did bristle upon his head.

D

XVII.

"Lo, Warrior! now, the Cross of Red

Points to the grave of the mighty dead;
Within it burns a wonderous light,

To chase the spirits that love the night :
That lamp shall burn unquenchably,

Until the eternal doom shall be."—

Slow moved the Monk to the broad flag-stone,
Which the bloody Cross was traced upon :

He pointed to a secret nook;

An iron bar the Warrior took ;

And the Monk made a sign with his withered hand,

The grave's huge portal to expand.

XVIII.

With beating heart to the task he went;

His sinewy frame o'er the grave-stone bent;
With bar of iron heaved amain,

Till the toil-drops fell from his brows, like rain.

It was by dint of passing strength,

That he moved the massy stone at length.
I would you had been there, to see
How the light broke forth so gloriously,
Streamed upward to the chancel roof,
And through the galleries far aloof!
No earthly flame blazed e'er so bright;
It shone like heaven's own blessed light,
And, issuing from the tomb,

Shewed the Monk's cowl, and visage pale,
Danced on the dark-brow'd Warrior's mail,
And kissed his waving plume.

XIX.

Before their eyes the Wizard lay,
As if he had not been dead a day.
His hoary beard in silver rolled,
He seemed some seventy winters old;
A palmer's amice wrapped him round,
With a wrought Spanish baldric bound,

Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea: His left hand held his Book of Might; A silver cross was in his right;

The lamp was placed beside his knee : High and majestic was his look,

At which the fellest fiends had shook,

And all unruffled was his face :

They trusted his soul had gotten grace.

XX.

Often had William of Deloraine

Rode through the battle's bloody plain,

And trampled down the warriors slain,

And neither known remorse or awe; Yet now remorse and awe he own'd;

His breath came thick, his head swam round, When this strange scene of death he saw. Bewildered and unnerved he stood,

And the priest prayed fervently, and loud:

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