Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE TOWER OF ERCILDOUNE, by DAVID MACBETH MOIR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE TOWER OF ERCILDOUNE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: There is a stillness on the night
Last Line: Except to lead us nearer heaven.
Alternate Author Name(s): Delta
Subject(s): Buildings & Builders; Desolation; Haunted Houses; Scotland; Walls


Quilum spak Thomas
O' Ersyldoune, that sayd in Derne,
Thare suld meit stalwartly, starke and sterne,
He sayd it in his prophecy;
But how he wyst it was ferly.
WYNTON'S CRONYKIL.

I.

THERE is a stillness on the night;
Glimmers the ghastly moonshine white
On Learmonth's woods, and Leader's streams,
Till Earth looks like a land of dreams:
Up in the arch of heaven afar,
Receded looks each little star,
And meteor flashes faintly play
By fits along the Milky Way.
Upon me in this eerie hush,
A thousand wild emotions rush,
As, gazing spell-bound o'er the scene,
Beside thy haunted walls I lean,
Grey Ercildoune, and feel the Past
His charmëd mantle o'er me cast;
Visions, and thoughts unknown to Day,
Bear o'er the fancy wizard sway,
And call up the traditions told
Of him who sojourned here of old.

II.

What stirs within thee? 'Tis the owl
Nursing amid thy chambers foul
Her impish brood; the nettles rank
Are seeding on thy wild-flower bank;
The hemlock and the dock declare
In rankness dark their mastery there;
And all around thee speaks the sway
Of desolation and decay.
In outlines dark the shadows fall
Of each grotesque and crumbling wall.
Extinguished long hath been the strife
Within thy courts of human life.
The rustic, with averted eye,
At fall of evening hurries by,
And lists to hear, and thinks he hears,
Strange sounds—the offspring of his fears;
And wave of bough, and waters' gleam,
Not what they are, but what they seem
To be, are by the mind believed,
Which seeks not to be undeceived.
Thou scowlest like a spectre vast
Of silent generations past,
And all about thee wears a gloom
Of something sterner than the tomb.
For thee, 'tis said, dire forms molest,
That cannot die, or will not rest.

III.

Backward my spirit to the sway
Of shadowy Eld is led away,
When, underneath thine ample dome,
Thomas the Rhymer made his home,
The wondrous poet-seer, whose name,
Still floating on the breath of fame,
Hath overpast five hundred years,
Yet fresh as yesterday appears,
With spells to arm the winter's tale,
And make the listener's cheek grow pale.
Secluded here in chamber lone,
Often the light of genius shone
Upon his pictured page, which told
Of Tristrem brave, and fair Isolde,
And how their faith was sorely tried,
And how they would not change, but died
Together, and the fatal stroke
Which stilled one heart, the other broke;
And here, on midnight couch reclined,
Hearkened his gifted ear the wind
Of dark Futurity, as on
Through shadowy ages swept the tone,
A mystic voice, whose murmurs told
The acts of eras yet unrolled;
While Leader sang a low wild tune,
And redly set the waning moon,
Amid the West's pavilion grim,
O'er Soltra's mountains vast and dim.

IV.

His mantle dark, his bosom bare,
His floating eyes and flowing hair,
Methinks the visioned bard I see
Beneath the mystic Eildon Tree,
Piercing the mazy depths of Time,
And weaving thence prophetic rhyme;
Beings around him that had birth
Neither in Heaven, nor yet on earth;
And at his feet the broken law
Of Nature, through whose chinks he saw.

V.

The Eildon Tree hath passed away
By natural process of decay;
We search around, and see it not,
Though yet a grey stone marks the spot
Where erst its boughs, with quivering fear,
O'erarched the sprite-attended seer,
Holding unhallowed colloquy
On things to come and things gone by.
And still the Goblin Burn steals round
The purple heath with lonely sound,
As when its waters stilled their noise
To listen to the silver voice,
Which sang in wild prophetic strains,
Of Scotland's perils and her pains—
Of dire defeat on Flodden Hill—
Of Pinkyncleuch's blood-crimsoned rill—
Of coming woes, of lowering wars,
Of endless battles, broils, and jars—
Till France's Queen should bear a son
To make two rival kingdoms one,
And many a wound of many a field
Of blood, in Bruce's blood be healed.

VI.

Where gained the man this wondrous dower
Of song and superhuman power?
Tradition answers,—Elfland's Queen
Beheld the boy-bard on the green,
Nursing pure thoughts and feelings high
With Poesy's abstracted eye;
Bewitched him with her sibyl charms,
Her tempting lips, and wreathing arms,
And lured him from the earth away
Into the light of milder day.
They passed through deserts wide and wild,
Whence living things were far exiled,
Shadows and clouds, and silence drear,
And shapes and images of fear;
Until they reached the land, where run
Rivers of blood, and shines no sun
By day—no moon, no star by night—
But glows a fair, a fadeless light—
The realm of Faëry.
There he dwelt,
Till seven sweet years had o'er him stealt—
A long, deep, rapturous trance, 'mid bowers
O'er-blossomed with perennial flowers—
One deep dream of ecstatic joy,
Unmeasured, and without alloy;
And when by Learmonth's turrets grey,
Which long had mourned their lord's delay,
Again 'mid summer's twilight seen,
His velvet shoon were Elfin green,
The livery of the tiny train
Who held him, and would have again.

VII.

Smil'st thou at this, prosaic age,
Whom seldom other thoughts engage
Than those of pitiable self,
The talismans of power and pelf—
Whose only dream is Bentham's dream,
And Poetry is choked by steam?
It must be so; but yet to him
Who loves to roam 'mid relics dim
Of ages, whose existence seems
Less like reality than dreams—
A raptured, an ecstatic trance,
A gorgeous vision of romance—
It yields a wildly pleasing joy,
To feel in soul once more a boy,
And breathe, even while we know us here,
Love's soft Elysian atmosphere;
To leave the rugged paths of Truth
For fancies that illumined youth,
And throw Enchantment's colours o'er
The forest dim, the ruin hoar,
The walks where musing Genius strayed,
The spot where Faith life's forfeit paid,
The dungeon where the patriot lay,
The cairn that marks the warrior's clay,
The rosiers twain that shed their bloom
In autumn o'er the lover's tomb;
For sure such scenes, if truth be found
In what we feel, are hallowed ground.

VIII.

Airy delusion this may be,
But ever such remain for me:
Still may the earth with beauty glow
Beneath the storm's illumined bow—
God's promised sign—and be my mind
To science, when it deadens, blind;
For mental light could ne'er be given
Except to lead us nearer Heaven.





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