Then while the sun made bright below And warmed the vales with its cheerful glow, The mighty cloud began to blow, And deafening cries flew round him. But still the altar on high begun With heart and will, from his labours done The crowning recompence now has won For him, to that end who bound him. There stands the Altar the saint before. The long laborious task is o'er. The Cross which once the victim bore, It too spreads wide its arms. The Chalice is there with the juice divine; The wafer that bares the sacred sign; And the tapers beside the Cross to shine; To work out the counter-charms. All ready beside the holy man Stood--when for a moment his eyes began To droop, and a feeling of slumber ran Through his veins oppress'd and weary. For toil an old man's limbs will shake: And toil an old man's frame will break: But, that instant past, he stands awake Within that cloud so dreary. It was enough: No counter-charm Might work that day the fiend-cubs harm. The Chalice he offers with outstretched arm Has a reptile form within it! And neither the saint nor the wine has power To banish one fiend from the Fell, that hour: For a lizard the edge of the chalice crept o'er, While he slept but that tithe of a minute. Then blew the fiends, as if they would blow The mountain itself to the plain below. And when the saint turned round to go, Down tumbled the Altar behind him: And boiled and seethed the Helm and Bar, And the winds rushed down on the valleys afar; While the Saint emerged, like a shining star, From the cloud where they could not bind him. And he went his way; and the fiends prevailed. And still is the mountain by fiends assailed. And the dismal Helm from afar is hailed As a tempest surely growing. The herdsman shudders, and hies away To his hut on the hills at close of day, For he knows whose cubs are abroad at play And setting the Helm wind blowing. His children mourn at the dolorous roar, And rush to his arms from hearth and floor. But the good man thinks of his stacks and store, His fields and his farmstead wasting. The housewife prays that the rain may fall: But the stars are shining high over all: And the Bar extends like a pitchy wall In the West, where the storm is hasting. The long loud roar, it deepens amain; And down from the Helm along valley and plain Goes the wind with invisible hosts in its train, And they mount the black Bar-cloud appalling; And they heave it and row it, those mariners dread, For days, till it anchors on Fiends'-Fell head: Then the big drops pour from the skies o'er spread, And the torrents to torrents are calling. NOTES TO "THE ALTAR ON CROSS-FELL."