The monastery; The abbot.

92 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
noble blood, and scorns sloth and cowardice. -And do I myself not stand
here slothful and cowardly as any priest of them all? - Why should I fear
to call upon this form - this shape?- Already have I endured the vision,
-and why not again? What can it do to me, who am a man of lith and
limb, and have by my side my father's sword? Does my heart beat -do
ny hairs bristle, at the thought of calling up a painted shadow, and how
should I face a band of Southrons in flesh and blood? By the soul of the
first Glendinning, I will make proof of the charm!"
He cast the leathern brogue or buskin from his right foot, planted himself in a firm posture, unsheathed his sword, and first looking around to
collect his resolution, he bowed three times deliberately towards the hollytree, and as often to the little fountain, repeating at the same time, with a
determined voice, the following rhyme:
"Thrice to the holly brake- "Noon gleams on the LakeThrice to the well:- Noon glows on the Fell —
I bid thee awake, Wake thee, 0 wake,
White Maid of Avenel! White Maid of Avenel!"
These lines were hardly uttered, when there stood the figure of a female
clothed in white, within three steps of Halbert Glendinning.
" I guess'twas frightful there to see
A lady richly clad as sheBeautiful exceedingly.",qn0 trr tilt ~mtHft4.
There's something in that ancient superstition,
Which, erring as it is, our fancy loves.
The spring that, with its thousand crystal bubbles,
Bursts from the bosom of some desert rock
In secret solitude, may well be deem'd
The haunt of something purer, more refined,
And mightier than ourselves.
OLD PLAY.
YOUNG Halbert Glendinning had scarcely pronounced the mystical rhymes,
than, as we have mentioned in the conclusion of the last chapter, an appearance, as of a beautiful female, dressed in white, stood within two yards of
him. His terror for the moment overcame his natural courage, as well as
the strong resolution which he had formed, that the figure which he had
now twice seen should not a third time daunt him. But it would seem there
is something thrilling and abhorrent to flesh and blood, in the consciousness that we stand in presence of a being in form like to ourselves, but
so different in faculties and nature, that we can neither understand its purposes, nor calculate its means of pursuing them.
Halbert stood silent and gasped for breath, his hairs erecting themselves
on his head - his mouth open - his eyes fixed, and, as the sole remaining
sign of his late determined purpose, his sword pointed towards the apparition. At length with a voice of ineffable sweetness, the White Lady, for by
that name we shall distinguish this being, sung, or rather chanted, the
following lines: -
"Youth of the dark eye, wherefore didst thou call me?
Wherefore art thou here, if terrors can appal thee?
He that seeks to deal with us must know no fear nor failing!
To coward and churl our speech is dark, our gifts are unavailing.
The breeze that brought me hither now, must sweep Egyptian ground,
The fleecy cloud on which I ride for Araby is bound;
The fleecy cloud is drifting by, the breeze sighs for my stay,
For I must sail a thousand miles before the close of day."
*Coleridge's Clhristabelle.