1839.

THE WEIRD LADY

The swevens came up round Harold the Earl,
   Like motes in the sunnes beam;
And over him stood the Weird Lady,
In her charmed castle over the sea,
   Sang ‘Lie thou still and dream.’

’Thy steed is dead in his stall, Earl Harold,
   Since thou hast been with me;
The rust has eaten thy harness bright,
And the rats have eaten thy greyhound light,
   That was so fair and free.’

Mary Mother she stooped from heaven;
She wakened Earl Harold out of his sweven,
   To don his harness on;
And over the land and over the sea
He wended abroad to his own countrie,
   A weary way to gon.

Oh but his beard was white with eld,
   Oh but his hair was gray;
He stumbled on by stock and stone,
And as he journeyed he made his moan
   Along that weary way.

Earl Harold came to his castle wall;
   The gate was burnt with fire;
Roof and rafter were fallen down,
The folk were strangers all in the town,
   And strangers all in the shire.

Earl Harold came to a house of nuns,
   And he heard the dead-bell toll;
He saw the sexton stand by a grave;
’Now Christ have mercy, who did us save,
   Upon yon fair nun’s soul.’

The nuns they came from the convent gate
   By one, by two, by three;
They sang for the soul of a lady bright
Who died for the love of a traitor knight: 
   It was his own lady.

He stayed the corpse beside the grave;
   ‘A sign, a sign!’ quod he. 
’Mary Mother who rulest heaven,
Send me a sign if I be forgiven
   By the woman who so loved me.’

A white dove out of the coffin flew;
   Earl Harold’s mouth it kist;
He fell on his face, wherever he stood;
And the white dove carried his soul to God
   Or ever the bearers wist.

Durham, 1840.

PALINODIA

Ye mountains, on whose torrent-furrowed slopes,
And bare and silent brows uplift to heaven,
I envied oft the soul which fills your wastes
Of pure and stern sublime, and still expanse
Unbroken by the petty incidents
Of noisy life:  Oh hear me once again!

Winds, upon whose racked eddies, far aloft,
Above the murmur of the uneasy world,
My thoughts in exultation held their way: 
Whose tremulous whispers through the rustling glade
Were once to me unearthly tones of love,
Joy without object, wordless music, stealing
Through all my soul, until my pulse beat fast
With aimless hope, and unexpressed desire—­
Thou sea, who wast to me a prophet deep
Through all thy restless waves, and wasting shores,
Of silent labour, and eternal change;
First teacher of the dense immensity
Of ever-stirring life, in thy strange forms
Of fish, and shell, and worm, and oozy weed: 
To me alike thy frenzy and thy sleep
Have been a deep and breathless joy:  Oh hear!