And limb and form alike declare
Some rival to her Bryan there;
Then softly on the ground she knelt,
And meekly o'er the sword hand dwelt
One moment, then as softly laid
The strange hand on its shivered blade.
Yet naught of joy she dared to feel
When stranger hands the truth reveal;
Too much suspense and awe were there,
Too much of terror and despair;
She could not still her boding heart,
She could not bid her fears depart;
No, though on many a chilly hand
Were crest and symbol of command,
And many a squire and knight and peer
Found on the heath unhonoured bier,
And many a wide domain would mourn
Its ancient lord on morrow's morn;
What were they now but wrecks of men
That ne'er should rise or rule again,
In equal company with all
Who vassals came, nor feared to fall?
For two long midnight hours the maid
Her search amid the dead essayed;
But mostly where the thickest slain
Told how the bravest strove in vain ;
For there she deemed her Bryan fought,
And there would be the form she sought;
Now passing with quick step and free,
Where squadrons charged or turned to flee,
And horse and rider scattered wide
Lay like the waifs of Ocean's tide,
When moonbeams break along the shore,
And faint and far the breakers roar,
And all that was so gay at morn
In that proud fleet, now rent and torn,
A battered wreckage, weird and wan,
Lies there in silence, bark and man.
Now with more careful foot she stept,
Where pikemen long their square had kept,
And even lay those ranks in death,
As when they formed upon the heath;
Save that a central heap disclosed,
How fierce the conflict round them closed,
How deep of blood the earth had drank,
How slow the lessening phalanx shrank;
Till the last remnant of the band
On comrades' corses took his stand,
And crowned their carnage with his own,
Unconquered still, though overthrown.
Few were there on that bloody heath
Who still repelled the approach of death;
Few, who, by effort strong or weak,
Could force the parched tongue to speak;
For some did scorn to ask for aid,
By Death or man too long delayed,
And with set teeth and clenched hand
Calmly confronted Death's demand,
Undaunted, stern, and resolute,
Hopeless of life yet proud and mute.
But where or eye or lip appealed
To maid or man their aid to yield;
Ralph of his store full freely gave,
Their thirst to quench, their brow to lave.
"Drink deep," he said, "it came from Nidd,
And bear ye bravely in your need."
"God's mercy on ye," Janet prayed,
"God's blessing with ye and God's aid."
But few there were to ask or hear
The yeoman's help or words of cheer;
The deepening silence all too well
Tells to the ear the piteous tale,
How fast the fallen faint and die,
How few shall see the dawn, though day be hovering
THE FINDING OF BRYAN-MARSTON MOOR.
Oн, ye who bend a careless eye,
When wreck and ruin flout the sky ;
Who curl the lip and pass the sneer
When shivering Want lets fall the tear,
Or shuddering Anguish wrings her hand
At sight of idle spear or brand;
Ye who would pass the jovial toast
While Widowhood still mourns the lost,
Or trim the tune to wanton air
Whilst young Affliction breeds despair;
Ye too who pass with lightsome tread
Where fallen heroes found a bed,
Nor heed the voices, low and still,
The reverential air that thrill
With sorrowing Nature's mournful strain
For her best sons at Youth-tide slain ;
Whene'er ye praise your liberty,
Oh, think of England's agony,
And, ere ye draw the sword again,
Oh, shed one pitying tear on Marston's dreary plain.
But now the fruitless quest and vain
Revives the maiden's hope again;
Though still, with unknown dread opprest,
She strives to calm her troubled breast,
Her heart, rebellious and too true,
Resents the treachery Hope would do;
Though, wider scattered than before,
The wreckage on the Western moor
Told her the task was all but o'er.
Upon the bank, where Leven stood
And early of the contest rued,
They stand at length,-the pale moonbeam.
Cast sickly splendours on the stream,
That gleamed not as a stream should gleam,
But lurid, ghastly, as the light
From blood-stained corselet gleams at night.
Beyond the stream a charger stood,
And by him, stretched upon the sod,
A trooper lay, whose clenched hand
Still o'er the bridle held command,
And bade, though motionless he lay,
The steed that master-hand obey.
As Ralph drew near with hurried stride
The affrighted charger swerved aside,
And strove to free himself in vain,
Till the quick knife had cleft the rein;
Then in wild terror, free and light,
He left for aye the scene of fight;
And though in frenzied haste of fear,
His feet ne'er touched the carnage near,
But deftly 'twixt the corses wound,
Or cleared them in his frantic bound;
So much of natural deference
For man is in the brutish sense.
But why aghast the yeoman stands,
Nor finds e'en strength to wring his hands?
Why motionless as pillared stone,
Or the wan form he looks upon ?
His bold, strong speech,-what ails it now?
It cannot frame e'en sound of woe,
Nor tell the prostrate trooper's fate
In tones e'en inarticulate.
He seemed as one entranced, that lies
"Twixt life and his last obsequies,
Conscious of all he last had done,
And all he last had gazed upon,
Yet lost to earth, and doubly lone.
Of all the powers that Nature gives
To shield or arm our fragile lives,
None in that hour of woe withstood
The frigid touch that chills the blood.
E'en though his eye had read the tale
Told by the trooper's visage pale,
It saw not what it gazed upon ;
All sense of outward things was gone,
Save the first glimpse his lamp revealed
Of all he feared, till now concealed
From his own heart, by confidence
In Bryan's martial competence.
No tremor stirred the stagnant brain
With consciousness of ill or pain;
No thing of earth found entrance there,
Where all was vacant, dark despair,
And sense of loss and hopelessness
Crushing all things to nothingness.
Of future times and past he thought,
The deeds his sturdy line had wrought,
Told by Tradition's rustic tongue
In many a village tale and song,
For Freedom's cause in civil strife,
Or 'gainst the Scot for home and life;
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