Yet never a path from day to day
The pilgrim's footsteps range,
Save but the solitary way

To Burndale's ruined grange.

A woeful place was this I ween,
As sorrow could desire;

For nodding to the fall was each crumbling wall,
And the roof was scathed with fire.

It fell upon a summer's eve,

While on Carnethy's head

The last faint gleams of the sun's low beams
Had streaked the gray with red;

And the convent bell did the

Newbattle's oaks among;

vesper tell

And mingled with the solemn knell
Our Ladye's evening song:

The heavy knell, the choir's faint swell,
Came slowly down the wind,
And on the pilgrim's ear they fell
As his wonted path he did find.

Deep sunk in thought, I ween, he was,
Nor ever raised his eye,

Until he came to that dreary place,
Which did all in ruins lie:

He gazed on the walls so scathed with fire,
With many a bitter groan-

And there was aware of a Gray Friar

Resting him on a stone.

"Now Christ thee save," said the Gray Brother,

"Some pilgrim thou seem'st to be;"

But in sore amaze did Lord Albert gaze

Nor answer again made he.

THE GRAY BROTHER.

"O come ye from east, or come ye from west,
Or bring relics from over the sea?

Or come ye from the shrine of St. James the divine,
Or St. John of Beverley?"

"I come not from the shrine of St. James the divine,
Nor bring relics from over the sea;

I bring but a curse from our Father the Pope,
Which for ever will cling to me."

"Now, woeful pilgrim, say not so!
But kneel thee down to me,

And shrive thee so clean of thy deadly sin,
That absolved thou mayest be."

"And who art thou, thou Gray Brother,
That I should shrive to thee,

127

When he, to whom are given the keys of earth and heaven
Has no power to pardon me?"

"O I am sent from a distant clime
Five thousand miles away,

And all to absolve a foul, foul crime
Done here 'twixt night and day."

The pilgrim kneeled him on the sand,
And thus began his say—
When on his neck an ice-cold hand

Did that Gray Brother lay.

SIR W. SCOTT.

The "Gray Brother" is founded upon a sad story given in the "Memorie of the Somervilles." Instead of going to Rome, Sir John Herring, the pilgrim, fled to Lord Somerville in Couthally Castle, and was there concealed until he made his peace with the Church. He had set fire to a house and burnt two licentious monks, one of whom had seduced his daughter. He was proprietor of Kersewell, Carnwath; they were of Newbattle Abbey. The place where this tragedy took place was near Gilmerton, and still bears the name of Burntdale. Sir John had to give up a good slice of his estate, to pay for masses for the repose of the souls of those he had sent so summarily out of the world. Lord Somerville married a daughter of this Sir John Herring, which marriage brought the lands of Drum into the Somerville family.

VERSES.

William Lithgow, the celebrated Lanark traveller, while standing sentry on a dark stormy night, on ship-board, in a creek of one of the islands of Greece, where the ship had taken refuge on being pursued by Turkish galliots, composed a poem of which the subjoined verses are a part.

WOULD God I might but live,
To see my native soil;
Twice happy is my happy wish

To end this endless toil.

Yet still when I record

The pleasant banks of Clyde,

Where orchards, castles, towns, and woods,

Are planted by his side;

And chiefly Lanark thou,

Thy country's lowest lamp,

In which this bruised body now
Did first receive the stamp.

To thee sweet Scotland, first,

My birth and breath I leave,

To heaven my soul, my heart King James,
My corpse to lie in grave.

My staff to pilgrims I,

And pen to poets send,

My hair-cloth robe, and half-spent goods,

To wandering wights I lend.

These trophies I erect

While memory remains,

An epitomical epitaph

On Lithgow's restless pains.

My will's inclosed with love,
My love with earthly bliss,

My bliss in substance doth consist
To crave no more but this.

THE BOWER O' CLYDE.

Thou first, is, was, and last,

Eternal of thy grace;

Protect, prolong Great Britain's King,
His son, and royal race.

129

Lithgow is believed to be the only person who endured all the tortures of the Inquisition and escaped alive. It is little to the credit of the natives of Lanark that no memorial of him exists in their beautiful cemetery.

THE BOWER O' CLYDE.

ON fair Clydeside there wonnit ane dame,
Ane dame of wondrous courtesie;

An' bonnie was the kindly flame

That streamit frae her saft blue e'e.

Her saft blue e'e, 'mid the hinney dew,
That meltit to its tender licht,

Was bonnier far than the purest starne

If

That sails thro' the dark blue hevin at nicht.

ony could look and safely see

Her dimplit cheek and her bonnie red mou,

Nor seek to sip the dew frae her lip,

A lifeless lump was he, I trow.

But it wad hae saftened the dullest wight,
If ae moment that wight micht see
Her bonny breast o' the purest snaw,
That heavit wi' love sae tenderlie.

Oh dear, dear, was this bonny dame,
Dear, dear, was she to me;

Oh

my heart was tane, and my sense was gane,
At ae blink o' her bonny blue e'e!

And sair, an' saft I pleadit my love,

Though still she hardly wad seem to hear,
An' wad cauldly blame the words o' flame
That I breathit sae warmly in her ear.

I

Yet aye as she turned her frae my look,
There was kindness beamit in her e'e;
And aye as she drew back her lily han',
I fand that it tremblit tenderlie.

But the time sune cam'-the waesome time,
When I maun pass awa' frae my dear;
An' oh! that thocht, how often it brocht

The deep-heavit sigh, and the cauld bitter tear.

Then I socht my love, her cauld heart to move, Wi' my tears, an' my sighs, an' my prayers, As I gaed by her side doun the banks o' the Clyde, An' the hours stole awa' unawares.

'Twas a still summer nicht, at the fa' o' the licht,
At the gloamin's soft an' shadowy hour,
As we wander'd alane till the daylicht was gane,
An' we cam' tae a sweet simmer bower.

The mune was up i' the clear blue sky,—
The mune an' her single wee star;
The win's gaed gently whisperin' by,
There was stillness near an' far.

Alane we sat i' the green simmer bower,
I told her a' that was kind an' dear;
An' she didna blame the words o' flame

That I breathit sae warmly in her ear.

She listened to the love-sang warm,

Her breast it throbbit an' heavit high; She could hear nae mair, but her gentle arm She leant upon mine wi' a tender sigh.

Then warmly I prest wi' my burnin' lips
Ae kiss on her bonny red mou',

An' often I prest her form to my breast,

An' fondly an' warmly I vowed to be true.