Wroth wax'd the Warrior.--"Am I then Fool'd by the enemies of men, Like a poor hind, whose homeward way Is haunted by malicious fay? Is Triermain become your taunt, De Vaux your scorn? False fiends, avaunt!" A weighty curtal-axe he bare; The baleful blade so bright and square, And the tough shaft of heben wood, Were oft in Scottish gore imbrued. Backward his stately form he drew, And at the rocks the weapon threw, Just where one crag's projected crest Hung proudly balanced o'er the rest, Hurl'd with main force, the weapon's shock Rent a huge fragment of the rock, If by mere strength, 'twere hard to tell, Or if the blow dissolved some spell, But down the headlong ruin came, With cloud of dust and flash of flame. Down bank, o'er bush, its course was borne, Crush'd lay the copse, the earth was torn, Till staid at length, the ruin dread Cumber'd the torrent's rocky bed, And bade the waters' high-swoln tide Seek other passage for its pride. When ceased that thunder, Triermain Survey'd the mound's rude front again; And lo! the ruin had laid bare, Hewn in the stone, a winding stair, Whose moss'd and fractured steps might lend The means the summit to ascend; And by whose aid the brave De Vaux Began to scale these magic rocks, And soon a platform won, Where, the wild witchery to close, Within three lances' length arose The Castle of Saint John! No misty phantom of the air, No meteor-blazon'd show was there: In morning splendour, full and fair, The massive fortress shone. Embattled high and proudly tower'd, Shaded by pond'rous flankers, lower'd The portal's gloomy way. Though for six hundred years and more, Its strength had brook'd the tempest's roar, The scutcheon'd emblems which it bore Had suffer'd no decay: But from the eastern battlement A turret had made sheer descent, And, down in recent ruin rent, In the mid torrent lay. Else, o'er the castle's brow sublime, Insults of violence or of time Unfelt had pass'd away. In shapeless characters of yore. The gate this stern inscription bore:-- INSCRIPTION.