 | Ballads of Irish chivalry |  |
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THE TEMPLAR KNIGHT.
[I]
Mid Corrin's haunted wildwoods, where the summer winds are straying,Around a glade of brightness, from dells and leafy bowers,
There stands a steed caparisoned, a small steed wildly neighing
To a boy and fair girl playing by Glendinan's high towers;
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And the stream its waves is flinging with a glad voice mid the flowers.
II
Moves the steed with sportful neighings, near and nearer to his master,With axe and spear crossed bravely on his gilded saddle-tree,
Where springs the boy with shout of joy, and, than the fleet winds faster,
His comrade, spurs he past her, with a bearing bold and free;
Then sudden cries: “Ho, yonder! see the magic halls of wonder,
Where the wizard old doth ponder on his spells to fetter me!”
III
Like a knight of peerless valour on his wild steed he is sweeping,Toward the wizard tower he fancies in the dreamy forest shade,—
With lance in rest for foeman's breast, his magic foe unsleeping,
In swift course he is keeping across that sunlit glade!
And thus each evening golden, mid those mossy wild-woods olden,
By dark care unbeholden, lived that boy and bright-eyed maid.
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IV
Years have passed—bright years of gladness—and their bridal bells are ringingAlong the summer mountains from that forest wild and wide;
Ah! thus from early childhood in the heart should love be springing,
Soul to soul in fondness clinging from its golden morning tide;
Yet, alas! for Gerald's dreaming of a bride in beauty beaming,
Mora's gone ere morn's first gleaming—falsely fled from Corrin side!
V
As he waited by the altar, fair and fond the dreams that bound him,—Chief of Houra's sunny green-woods, with a bride as fair as May,—
And his look was calmly joyous to the vassals circled round him,
Till the tale of sorrow found him that his bride had fled away,—
His love, his anger scorning, a stranger's home adorning,
To Carrignour that morning with its baron bold and gay.
VI
The priest hath words of comfort, the mother mournful sighing,The vassals' shouts of fury loud as battle trumpets blown,
And, “Bring me”, cries young Gerald, “my warsteed, that out-flying,
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That the traitor lord may learn my vengeance red and stern,
Ere he treads his native fern by the Funcheon's valleys lone!”
VII
He has donned his battle harness, and away so wild careering,His good steed bears him bravely towards the valleys of Glenroe,
Till in the golden noontide, from a forest hill down peering,
Little caring, little fearing, so he meet his traitor foe,
Where a stream its tide is sending in many a silver bending,
He espies the false pair wending through the flowery dells below.
VIII
By the baron kneels the maid at the evening's calm returning,But love is drowned in sorrow, and joy is changed to fear,—
By the baron kneels the maid all alone and wildly mourning,
And his tales with warm love burning she never more shall hear;
For away young Gerald straineth from the spot where she remaineth,
And the baron's life-blood staineth his conquering border spear!
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IX
But revenge ne'er changed the bosom from its dark and dreary madnessTo joy, and thus with Gerald as he rides o'er moor and moss,—
“Ah! the shadow of despair”, he cries, “has sunk my hope in sadness,
Love's gold I sought in gladness, and find it leaden dross;
So away from lovely Mulla, where she sings by height and hollow,
Another path I'll follow,—a champion of the cross!”
X
It was a golden morning mid summer's reign of splendour,Young Gerald took his lance and steed, and sped from Houra's wold;
But the fond farewell, when with sweet spell immortal love doth lend her
Words mournful true and tender, no weeping maiden told,
Yet one true heart weepeth ever since he left his native river,
And no joy the world can give her, his mother sad and old.
XI
And she cries: “Again, oh! never shall I see my Gerald ridingTo the chase in merry greenwood at the blithesome peep of morn,
Shall his looks of gladness cheer me, shall his words of love come gliding,
With peace and joy abiding, to my heart so sorrow-torn!”
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Else her heart had ceased its beating,—she had died in grief forlorn.
XII
Long she hoped for his returning to his hall with name of glory,Till the flowers of ten bright summers lay dead on mead and tomb;
Then unseen he stood one morning on Corrin's summit hoary,
Gazing round that land of story on each well-known scene of bloom;—
Dreams of fair maids he was spurning, who might come with warm love burning,
When they heard of his returning, for he wore the Templar plume!
XIII
Many dreams of his sweet childhood there his memory might borrow,Yet he entered with a sinking heart his native hall once more.
There he found his mother sitting in her lorn and silent sorrow,
As she sat that golden morrow when he left his home of yore;—
Glad and sudden up she started, “Oh! we'll never more be parted!”
And she died all joyous-hearted in his arms by Mulla's shore!
XIV
To Glendinan Sir Gerald has brought across the oceanFive Templars, he their leader, with all their vassal power,
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Tolls their bell to meet devotion o'er cot and hall and bower:
And long their banner knightly in the sunshine glittered brightly,
To the breezes fluttered lightly from that ancient Templar tower!
Glendinan, an extensive valley at the north side of the Bally-Houra mountains, facing the plain of Limerick. At its upper extremity lies a small, oblong, and dilapidated stone chamber, like a grave, called by the country people Iscur's Bed; about a mile below which, on the edge of a glen, are the remains of an old building, which, according to tradition, was an establishment of the Knights Templars.
| Ballads of Irish chivalry | |