Of Brian's birth strange tales were told. His mother watched a midnight fold, Built deep within a dreary glen, Where scattered lay the bones of men In some forgotten battle slain, And bleached by drifting wind and rain. It might have tamed a warrior's heart To view such mockery of his art! The knot-grass fettered there the hand Which once could burst an iron band; Beneath the broad and ample bone, That bucklered heart to fear unknown, A feeble and a timorous guest, The fieldfare framed her lowly nest; There the slow blindworm left his slime On the fleet limbs that mocked at time; And there, too, lay the leader's skull Still wreathed with chaplet, flushed and full, For heath-bell with her purple bloom Supplied the bonnet and the plume. All night, in this sad glen the maid Sat shrouded in her mantle's shade: She said no shepherd sought her side, No hunter's hand her snood untied. Yet ne'er again to braid her hair The virgin snood did Alive wear; Gone was her maiden glee and sport, Her maiden girdle all too short, Nor sought she, from that fatal night, Or holy church or blessed rite But locked her secret in her breast, And died in travail, unconfessed. VI. Alone, among his young compeers, Was Brian from his infant years; A moody and heart-broken boy, Estranged from sympathy and joy Bearing each taunt which careless tongue On his mysterious lineage flung. Whole nights he spent by moonlight pale To wood and stream his teal, to wail, Till, frantic, he as truth received What of his birth the crowd believed, And sought, in mist and meteor fire, To meet and know his Phantom Sire! In vain, to soothe his wayward fate, The cloister oped her pitying gate; In vain the learning of the age Unclasped the sable-lettered page; Even in its treasures he could find Food for the fever of his mind. Eager he read whatever tells Of magic, cabala, and spells, And every dark pursuit allied To curious and presumptuous pride; Till with fired brain and nerves o'erstrung, And heart with mystic horrors wrung, Desperate he sought Benharrow's den, And hid him from the haunts of men. VII.