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 holly-tree, and as often to the little fountain, repeating at the same time, with a determined voice, the following rhyme:
'Thrice to the holly brake,
Thrice to the well;
I bid thee awake,
White Maid of Avenel!
'Noon gleams on the lake,
Noon glows on the fell;
Wake thee, O wake,
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 she—Beautiful
exceedingly.[1]
Chapter XII
There's something in that ancient superstition,
Which, erring as it is, our fancy Ipves.
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.
- ↑ Coleridge's Christabel.
