The old Tower's brow yellowed as with the beams
Of sunset ever there, albeit streams
Of stormy weather-stains that semblance wrought,
I thank the silent monitor, and say,
"Shine so, my aged brow, at all hours of the day!" William Wordsworth.
Bamborough.
BAMBOROUGH CASTLE.
holy towers that shade the wave-worn steep, Long may ye rear your aged brows sublime, Though, hurrying silent by, relentless Time Assail you, and the winds of winter sweep Round your dark battlements; for far from halls Of Pride, here Charity hath fixed her seat, Oft listening, tearful, when the tempests beat With hollow bodings round your ancient walls; And Pity, at the dark and stormy hour Of midnight, when the moon is hid on high, Keeps her lone watch upon the topmost tower, And turns her ear to each expiring cry; Blessed if her aid some fainting wretch may save, And snatch him cold and speechless from the wave. William Lisle Bowles.
ERE let me stand, and gaze upon the scene;
That headland, and those winding sands, and mark
The morning sunshine, on that very shore
Where once a child I wandered. O, return
(I sigh), return a moment, days of youth,
Of childhood, — O, return! How vain the thought,
Vain as unmanly! yet the pensive Muse,
Unblamed may dally with imaginings;
For this wide view is like the scene of life,
Once traversed o'er with carelessness and glee,
And we look back upon the vale of years,
And hear remembered voices, and behold,
In blended colors, images and shades
Long passed, now rising, as at Memory's call,
Again in softer light.
Home of my infancy, I see thee not,
Thou fane that standest on the hill alone,
The homeward sailor's sea-mark; but I view
Brean Down beyond; and there thy winding sands,
Weston; and far away, one wandering ship,
Where stretches into mist the Severn Sea.
There, mingled with the clouds, old Cambria draws
Its stealing line of mountains lost in haze;
There in mid-channel sit the sister-holms,
Secure and tranquil, though the tide's vast sweep,
As it rides by, might almost seem to rive
The deep foundations of the earth again,
Threatening, as once, resistless, to ascend
In tempest to this height, to bury here
Fresh-weltering carcasses!
THE Moon is in her summer glow,
But hoarse and high the breezes blow,
And, racking o'er her face, the cloud
Varies the tincture of her shroud;
On Barnard's towers and Tees's stream
She changes as a guilty dream,
When Conscience with remorse and fear
Goads sleeping Fancy's wild career.
Her light seems now the blush of shame,
Seems now fierce anger's darker flame,
Shifting that shade, to come and go,
Like apprehension's hurried glow;
Then sorrow's livery dims the air,
And dies in darkness, like despair.
Such varied hues the warder sees
Reflected from the woodland Tees,
Then from old Baliol's tower looks forth,
Sees the clouds mustering in the north,
Hears upon turret-roof and wall
By fits the plashing rain-drop fall,
Lists to the breeze's boding sound,
And wraps his shaggy mantle round.
Far in the chambers of the west,
The gale had sighed itself to rest;
The moon was cloudless now and clear,
But pale, and soon to disappear.
The thin gray clouds wax dimly light
On Brusleton and Houghton height;
And the rich dale, that eastward lay,
Waited the wakening touch of day,
To give its woods and cultured plain,
And towers and spires, to light again.
But, westward, Stanmore's shapeless swell,
And Lunedale wild, and Kelton-fell,
And rock-begirdled Gilmanscar,
And Arkingarth, lay dark afar;
While, as a livelier twilight falls,
Emerge proud Barnard's bannered walls.
High crowned he sits, in dawning pale,
The sovereign of the lovely vale.
What prospects, from his watchtower high,
Gleam gradual on the warder's eye! -
Far sweeping to the east, he sees
Down his deep woods the course of Tees,
And tracks his wanderings by the steam
Of summer vapors from the stream;
And ere he pace his destined hour
By Brackenbury's dungeon-tower,
These silver mists shall melt away,
And dew the woods with glittering spray.
Then in broad lustre shall be shown
That mighty trench of living stone,
And each huge trunk that, from the side,
Reclines him o'er the darksome tide,
Where Tees, full many a fathom low,
Wears with his rage no common foe;
For pebbly bank, nor sand-bed here,
Nor clay-mound, checks his fierce career,
Condemned to mine a channelled way
O'er solid sheets of marble gray.
Nor Tees alone, in dawning bright,
Shall rush upon the ravished sight;
But many a tributary stream
Each from its own dark dell shall gleam:
Staindrop, who, from her sylvan bowers,
Salutes proud Raby's battled towers;
The rural brook of Egliston,
And Balder, named from Odin's son:
And Greta, to whose banks erelong
We lead the lovers of the song;
And silver Lune, from Stanmore wild,
And fairy Thorsgill's murmuring child,
And last and least, but loveliest still,
Romantic Deepdale's slender rill.
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