Because the monks preferr'd a hill behind,
To shelter their devotion from the wind.

It stood embosom'd in a happy valley,

Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak Stood like Caractacus in act to rally

His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunderstroke;
And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally
The dappled foresters-as day awoke,

The branching stag swept down with all his herd,
To quaff a brook which murmur'd like a bird.
Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,

Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed
By a river, which its soften'd way did take
In currents through the calmer water spread
Around the wildfowl nestled in the brake

And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed;
The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fix'd upon the flood.

Its outlet dash'd into a deep cascade,

Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding,
Its shriller echoes-like an infant made
Quiet-sank into softer ripples, gliding

Into a rivulet; and thus allay'd,

Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, According as the skies their shadows threw.

A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile

(While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart In a grand arch, which once screen'd many an aisle. These last had disappear'd-a loss to art:

The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil,
And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,

Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's march.
In gazing on that venerable arch.

Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle,

Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone;

But these had fallen, not when the friars fell,

But in the war which struck Charles from his throne,

When each house was a fortalice-as tell

The annals of full many a line undone,

The gallant cavaliers, who fought in vain
For those who knew not to resign or reign.

But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd,

The Virgin Mother of the God-born Child, With her Son in her blessed arms, look'd round,

Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd;
She made the earth below seem holy ground.
This may be superstition, weak or wild,

But even the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.

A mighty window, hollow in the centre,
Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,
Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter,
Streaming from off the sun like seraph's wings,
Now yawns all desolate now loud, now fainter,
The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sings
The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire
Lie with their hallelujahs quench'd like fire.
But in the noontide of the moon, and when
The wind is winged from one point of heaven,
There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then
Is musical-a dying accent driven

Through the huge arch, which soars and sings again.
Some deem it but the distant echo given
Back to the night wind by the waterfall,
And harmonized by the old choral wall:

Others, that some original shape, or form

Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power
(Though less than that of Memnon's statue, warm
In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fix'd hour)
To this grey ruin, with a voice to charm.

Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower;
The cause I know not, nor can solve; but such
The fact I've heard it,- -once perhaps too much.
Amidst the court a Gothic fountain play'd,

Symmetrical, but deck'd with carvings quaintStrange faces, like to men in masquerade,

And here perhaps a monster, there a saint: The spring gush'd through grim mouths of granite made And sparkled into basins, where it spent

Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles,

Like man's vain glory, and his vainer troubles.

The mansion's self was vast and venerable,

With more of the monastic than has been

Elsewhere preserved: the cloisters still were stable,
The cells, too, and refectory, I ween;

An exquisite small chapel had been able,

Still unimpair'd, to decorate the scene;

The rest had been reform'd, replaced, or sunk,
And spoke more of the baron than the monk.

Huge halls, long galleries, spacious chambers, join'd
By no quite lawful marriage of the arts,
Might shock a connoisseur; but when combined,
Form'd a whole, which, irregular in parts,

Yet left a grand impression on the mind,

At least of those whose eyes are in their hearts.

And made, in this extreme of ill,
His pangs the vassals of his will:
All silent and subdued were they,
As once the nations round him lay.

III.

A band of chiefs!-alas! how few,
Since but the fleeting of a day
Had thinn'd it; but this wreck was true
And chivalrous: upon the clay
Each sate him down, all sad and mute,
Beside his monarch and his steed,
For danger levels man and brute,
And all are fellows in their need.
Among the rest, Mazeppa made
His pillow in an old oak's shade,-
Himself as rough, and scarce less old,
The Ukraine's hetman, calm and bold:
But first, outspent with this long course,
The Cossack prince rubb'd down his horse,
And made for him a leafy bed,

And smooth'd his fetlocks and his mane, And slack'd his girth, and stripp'd his rein, And joy'd to see how well he fed;

For until now he had the dread

His wearied courser might refuse

To browse beneath the midnight dews

But he was hardy as his lord,

And little cared for bed and board;
But spirited and docile too;

Whate'er was to be done, would do.
Shaggy and swift, and strong of limb,
All Tartar-like he carried him;
Obey'd his voice, and came to call,
And knew him in the midst of all:
Though thousands were around, and Night
Without a star, pursued her flight,-
That steed from sunset until dawn
His chief would follow like a fawn.

IV

This done, Mazeppa, spread his cloak,
And laid his lance beneath his oak,
Felt if his arms in order good

The long day's march had well withstood

If still the powder fill'd the pan,

And flints unloosen'd kept their lock-
His sabre's hilt and scabbard felt,

And whether they had chafed his belt-
And next the venerable man,

From out his havresack and can,

Prepared and spread his slender stock,
And to the monarch and his men
The whole or portion offer'd then,
With far less of inquietude

Than courtiers at a banquet would.
And Charles of this his slender share
With smiles partook a moment there,
To force of cheer a greater show,

And seem above both wounds and woe;--
And then he said-"Of all our band,
Though firm of heart and strong of hand,
In skirmish, march, or forage none
Can less have said or more have done
Than thee, Mazeppa? On the earth
So fit a pair had never birth,
Since Alexander's days till now,
As thy Bucephalus and thou:

All Scythia's fame to thine should yield
For pricking on o'er flood and field."
Mazeppa answer'd-" Ill betide

The school wherein I learn'd to ride !"
Quoth Charles-"Old Hetman, wherefore so,
Since thou hast learn'd the art so well?"
Mazeppa said-" "Twere long to tell;
And we have many a league to go,
With every now and then a blow,
And ten to one at least the foe,
Before our steeds may graze at ease
Beyond the swift Borysthenes:
And, sire, your limbs have need of rest,
And I will be the sentinel

Of this your troop."-" But I request,"
Said Sweden's monarch, "thou wilt tell
This tale of thine, and I may reap,
Perchance, from this the boon of sleep:
For at this moment from my eyes
The hope of present slumber flies."

"Well, sire, with such a hope, I'll track
My seventy years of memory back:
I think 'twas in my twentieth spring,-
Ay, 'twas when Casimir was king-
John Casimir,-I was his page
Six summers, in my earlier age:
A learned monarch, faith! was he,
And most unlike your majesty:
He made no wars, and did not gain
New realms to lose them back again;
And (save debates in Warsaw's Diet)
He reign'd in most unseemly quiet;
Not that he had no cares to vex,
He loved the muses and the sex;
And sometimes these so froward are,
They made him wish himself at war;
But soon his wrath being o'er, he took
Another mistress, or new book;
And then he gave prodigious fêtes-
All Warsaw gather'd round his gates
To gaze upon his splendid court