VIII.

And now the vessel skirts the strand Of mountainous Northumberland; Towns, towers, and halls successive rise, And catch the nuns’ delighted eyes. Monkwearmouth soon behind them lay, And Tynemouth’s priory and bay; They marked, amid her trees, the hall Of lofty Seaton-Delaval; They saw the Blythe and Wansbeck floods Rush to the sea through sounding woods; They passed the tower of Widderington, Mother of many a valiant son; At Coquet Isle their beads they tell To the good saint who owned the cell; Then did the Alne attention claim, And Warkworth, proud of Percy’s name; And next, they crossed themselves, to hear The whitening breakers sound so near, Where, boiling through the rocks, they roar On Dunstanborough’s caverned shore; Thy tower, proud Bamborough, marked they there, King Ida’s castle, huge and square, From its tall rock look grimly down, And on the swelling ocean frown; Then from the coast they bore away, And reached the Holy Island’s bay.