Ch. 11: Rook Cell - Page 2

and foray on a bright Sunday morning.

Beside the occasional clamor of the rookery, this remote apartment was often greeted with sounds of a different kind, from the neighboring ruins. The great lancet window in front of the chapel, adjoins the very wall of the chamber; and the mysterious sounds from it at night have been well described by Lord Byron:

--"Now loud, now frantic, The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sings The owl his anthem, when the silent quire Lie with their hallelujahs quenched like fire.

"But on the noontide of the moon, and when The wind is winged from one point of heaven, There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then Is musical-a dying accent driven Through the huge arch, which soars and sinks again. Some deem it but the distant echo given Back to the night wind by the waterfall, And harmonized by the old choral wall.

"Others, that some original shape or form, Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power To this gray ruin, with a voice to charm. Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower; The cause I know not, nor can solve; but such The fact:--I've heard it,--once perhaps too much."

Never was a traveller in quest of the romantic in greater luck. I had in sooth, got lodged in another haunted apartment of the Abbey; for in this chamber Lord Byron declared he had more than once been harassed at midnight by a mysterious visitor. A black shapeless form would sit cowering upon his bed, and after gazing at him for a time with glaring eyes, would roll off and disappear. The same uncouth apparition is said to have disturbed the slumbers of a newly married couple that once passed their honeymoon in this apartment.

I would observe, that the access to the Rook Cell is by a spiral stone staircase leading up into it, as into a turret, from, the long shadowy corridor over the cloisters, one of the midnight walks of the Goblin Friar. Indeed, to the fancies engendered in his brain in this remote and lonely apartment, incorporated with the floating superstitions of the Abbey, we are no doubt indebted for the spectral scene in "Don Juan."

"Then as the night was clear, though cold, he threw His chamber door wide open--and went forth Into a gallery, of sombre hue, Long furnish'd with old pictures of great worth, Of knights and dames, heroic and chaste too, As doubtless should be people of high birth.

"No sound except the echo of his sigh Or step ran sadly through that antique house, When suddenly he heard, or thought so, nigh, A supernatural agent--or a mouse, Whose little nibbling rustle will embarrass Most people, as it plays along the arras.

"It was no mouse, but lo! a monk, arrayed In cowl, and beads, and dusky garb, appeared, Now in the moonlight, and now lapsed in shade; With steps that trod as heavy, yet unheard; His garments only a slight murmur made; He moved as shadowy as the