They dined at an inn by the wayside, and the dinner
was mirthful; then they wended their way slowly back.
By the declining daylight their talk grew somewhat
graver, and Kenelm took more part in it. Tom
listened mute,—still fascinated. At
length, as the town came in sight, they agreed to
halt a while, in a bosky nook soft with mosses and
sweet with wild thyme.
There, as they lay stretched at their ease, the birds
hymning vesper songs amid the boughs above, or dropping,
noiseless and fearless, for their evening food on
the swards around them, the wanderer said to Kenelm,
“You tell me that you are no poet, yet I am sure
you have a poet’s perception: you must
have written poetry?”
“Not I; as I before told you, only school verses
in dead languages: but I found in my knapsack
this morning a copy of some rhymes, made by a fellow-collegian,
which I put into my pocket meaning to read them to
you both. They are not verses like yours, which
evidently burst from you spontaneously, and are not
imitated from any other poets. These verses
were written by a Scotchman, and smack of imitation
from the old ballad style. There is little to
admire in the words themselves, but there is something
in the idea which struck me as original, and impressed
me sufficiently to keep a copy, and somehow or other
it got into the leaves of one of the two books I carried
with me from home.”
“What are those books? Books of poetry
both, I will venture to wager—”
“Wrong! Both metaphysical, and dry as
a bone. Tom, light your pipe, and you, sir,
lean more at ease on your elbow; I should warn you
that the ballad is long. Patience!”
“Attention!” said the minstrel.
“Fire!” added Tom.
Kenelm began to read,—and he read well.
LORD
RONALD’S BRIDE.
“WHY gathers the crowd in the market-place
Ere the stars have yet left
the sky?”
“For a holiday show and an act of
grace,—
At the sunrise a witch
shall die.”
“What deed has she done to deserve
that doom?
Has she blighted the
standing corn,
Or rifled for philters a dead man’s
tomb,
Or rid mothers of babes
new-born?”
“Her pact with the fiend was not
thus revealed,
She taught sinners the
Word to hear;
The hungry she fed, and the sick
she healed,
And was held as a Saint
last year.
“But a holy man, who at Rome had
been,
Had discovered, by book
and bell,
That the marvels she wrought were
through arts unclean,
And the lies of the
Prince of Hell.
“And our Mother the Church, for
the dame was rich,
And her husband was
Lord of Clyde,
Would fain have been mild to this
saint-like witch
If her sins she had
not denied.
“But hush, and come nearer to see
the sight,
Sheriff, halberds, and
torchmen,—look!
That’s the witch standing
mute in her garb of white,
By the priest with his
bell and book.”
