University of Virginia Library

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CANTO III.

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The Troubadour was never finished. Fragments only of the third Canto have been found, written upon stray leaves of paper.

It is the hour, the lonely hour,
Which desolate rhymers love to praise,
When listless they lie in brake or bower,
In dread of their duns, or in dreams of their bays;
The glowing sun has gone away
To cool his face in the ocean spray,
And the stars shine out in the liquid blue,
And the beams of the moon in silence fall
On rock and river, wood and wall,
Flinging alike on each and all
A silver ray and a sober hue.
The village casements all are dark,
The chase is done in the princely park,
The scholar has closed the volume old,
And the miser has counted the buried gold;
There is not a foot and there is not a gale
To shake the roses in Ringmore Vale;
There is not a bird, the groves along,
To wake the night with his gushing song;
Nothing is heard but sounds that render
The rest which they disturb more tender;

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The glassy river wanders still
Making low music round the hill;
And the last faint drops of the shower that fell
While the monks were ringing the vesper bell
Are trickling yet from leaf to leaf,
Like the big slow drops of an untold grief.

Sometimes, upon a gala night,
Beneath the torches' festal light,
When I have seen your footsteps glance,
Sweet sister, through the merry dance,
Light as the wind that scarcely heaves

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The softest of the soft roseleaves
In summer's sunniest hour,—
Sometimes, upon the level shore
Washed by the sea wave just before,
When I have seen your palfrey glide
Along the margin of the tide,
As fleet as some imagined form
That smiles in calm, or frowns in storm,
Before the minstrel's bower,—
One moment I have ceased to doubt
The tales which poets pass about,
Of Fairies and their golden wings,
Their earthward whims and wanderings,
The mummeries in which they traded,
The houses where they masqueraded,
The half unearthly tone they spoke,
The half unearthly thought they woke,
The rich they plagued, the poor they righted,
The heads they posed, the hearts they blighted!

So fancied Vidal, when he gazed
Upon a hundred glancing eyes,
While high in hall the torches blazed,
And all the blended witcheries
That clothe the revel of the night,
The dance's most voluptuous rounds,
And Beauty's most enthralling light,
And music's most entrancing sounds,

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And many a tale, and many a song,
Which only passion sings and tells,
And dreams, most dazzling when most wrong,
Wove o'er him their delicious spells.
It was a long and spacious hall;
The limner's hand had wandered there,
And peopled half the lofty wall
With wondrous forms of great and fair;
And in small niches shapes of stone
Looked soft and white, like winter snow,
Queen Venus with her haunted zone,
Prince Cupid with his bended bow;
And there were brooks of essenced waters;
And mighty mirrors half a score
To tell the Baron's lovely daughters
What all their maids had told before;
And here an amorous lord was singing
Of honour's reign, or battle's rout;
And there a giggling page was flinging
Handfuls of odorous flowers about;
And wine and wit were poured together
From many a lip, from many a can;
And barons bowed beneath a feather,
And beauties blushed behind a fan;
And all were listening, laughing, chattering,
Playing the fiddle and the fool,
And metaphorically flattering,
According to established rule.

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Thus deftly all did play their part,
The valiant and the fair,

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And Vidal's was the lightest heart,
Of all that trifled there.
Some six-and-twenty springs had past
In more of smiles than tears;
And boyhood's dreams had fleeted fast
With boyhood's fleeting years!
His voice was sweet, but deeper now
Than when its songs were new;
And o'er his cheek, and o'er his brow,
There fell a darker hue;
His eye had learned a calmer ray,
By browner ringlets shaded;
And from his lips the sunny play
Of their warm smile had faded:
And, out alas! the perished thrill
Of feeling's careless flashes,
The glistening flames, that now were chill
In darkness, dust, and ashes,
The joys that wound, the pains that bless,
Were all, were all departed;
And he was wise and passionless,
And happy and cold-hearted.
It was not that the brand of sin
Had stamped its deadly blot within;
That riches had been basely won,
Or midnight murder darkly done;
That Valour's ardent glow had died,
Or Honour lost its truth and pride:

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115

Oh no! but Vidal's joy and grief
Had been too common, and too brief!
The weariness of human things
Had dried affection's silent springs,
And round his very heart had curled
The poisons of the drowsy world.
And he had conned the bitter lie
Of Fashion's dull philosophy;
How friendship is a schoolboy's theme,
And constancy a madman's dream,
And majesty a mouldering bust,
And loveliness a pinch of dust.
And so,—for when the wicked jest
The renegade blasphemes the best,—
He crushed the hopes which once he felt,
And mocked the shrines where once he knelt,
And taught that only fools endure
To find aught human good and pure.

And yet his heart was very light,
His taste was very fine;
His rapier and his wit were bright,
His attitudes divine:
He taught how snowy arms should rise,
How snowy plumes should droop;
And published rhapsodies on sighs,
And lectures upon soup;

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He was the arbiter of bets,
The fashioner of phrases;
And harpers sang his canzonets,
And peeresses his praises.
And when, at some high dame's command,
Upon the lyre he laid his hand,
As now to-night, and flung aside
His silken mantle's crimson pride,
And o'er the strings so idly leant,
That you might think the instrument
Unwaked by any touch replied
To all its master said or sighed,
All other occupations ceased;
The revellers rose from cup and feast,
Young pages paused from scattering posies,
Old knights forgot to blow their noses,
And daughters smiled, and mothers frowned,
And peers beat time upon the ground;
And beauty bowed her silent praise,
Which is so dear to minstrel lays;
And envy dropped her whispered gall,
Which is the dearest praise of all.

That night, amid the motley crowd,
In graver than his wonted mood,
When other lips were gay and loud,
The Troubadour had silent stood:

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Perhaps some dreams of those young hours
Whose light was now all cold and dim,
Some visions of the faded flowers
Whose buds had bloomed their last for him,
Came in their secret beauty back,
Like fairy elves, whose footsteps steal
Unseen, unheard, upon their track,
Except to those they harm or heal.
Oh! often will a look or sigh,
Unmarked by other eyes or ears,
Recall, we know not whence or why,
Sad thoughts that have been dead for years:
For sunset leaves the river warm
Through evening's most benumbing chill;
And when the present cannot charm,
The past can live and torture still!

Yet now, as if the secret spell
That bound his inmost soul were broken,
He taught his harp a lighter swell
Than ever yet its strings had spoken;
And those who saw, and watched the while,
The smile that came, the frown that faded,
Could hardly tell if frown, or smile,
Or both, or neither, masqueraded.

“Clotilda! many hearts are light,
And many lips dissemble;

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But I am thine till priests shall fight,
Or Cœur de Lion tremble!—
Hath Jerome burned his rosary,
Or Richard shrunk from slaughter?
Oh! no, no,
Dream not so!
But till you mean your hopes to die,
Engrave them not in water!

“Sweet Ida, on my lonely way
Those tears I will remember,
Till icicles shall cling to May,
Or roses to December!—
Are snow-wreaths bound on Summer's brow?
Is drowsy Winter waking?
Oh! no, no,
Dream not so!
But lances, and a lover's vow,
Were only made for breaking.

“Lenora, I am faithful still,
By all the saints that listen,
Till this warm heart shall cease to thrill,
Or these wild veins to glisten!—
This bosom,—is its pulse less high?
Or sleeps the stream within it?
Oh! no, no,
Dream not so!

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But lovers find eternity
In less than half a minute.

“And thus to thee I swear to-night,
By thine own lips and tresses,
That I will take no further flight,
Nor break again my jesses:
And wilt thou trust the faith I vowed,
And dream in spite of warning?
Oh! no, no,
Dream not so!
But go and lure the midnight cloud,
Or chain the mist of morning.

“These words of mine, so false and bland,
Forget that they were spoken!
The ring is on thy radiant hand,—
Dash down the faithless token!
And will they say that Beauty sinned,
That Woman turned a rover?
Oh! no, no,
Dream not so!
But lover's vows are like the wind.
And Vidal is a Lover!”

Ere the last echo of the words
Died on the lip and on the chords,

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The Baron's jester, who was clever
At blighting characters for ever,
And whom all people thought delightful,
Because he was so very spiteful,
Stooped down to tie his sandal's string,
And found by chance a lady's ring;
So small and slight, it scarce had spanned
The finger of a fairy's hand,—
Or thine, sweet Rose, whose hand and wrist
Are much the least I ever kissed:—
Upon the ruby it enclosed
A bleeding heart in peace reposed,
And round was graved in letters clear:
“Let by the month, or by the year.”
Young Pacolet, from ring and song,
Thought something might be somewhere wrong,
And round the room in transport flitted
To find whose hand the bauble fitted.

He was an ugly dwarfish knave,
Most gravely wild, most wildly grave;
It seemed that Nature, in a whim,
Had mixed a dozen shapes in him;
One arm was longer than the other,
One leg was running from his brother,
And one dark eye, with fondest labour,
Coquetted with his fairer neighbour:

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His colour ever came and went,
Like clouds upon the firmament,
And yet his cheeks, in any weather,
Were never known to blush together:
To-day his voice was shrill and harsh,
Like homilies from Doctor Marsh;
To-morrow from his rosy lip
The sweetest of sweet sounds would trip;
Far sweeter than the song of birds,
Or the first lisp of Childhood's words,
Or Zephyrs soft, or waters clear,
Or Love's own vow to Love's own ear.
Such were the tones he murmured now,
As, wreathing lip and cheek and brow
Into a smile of wicked glee,
He begged upon his bended knee
That maid and matron, young and old,
Would try the glittering hoop of gold.

But then, as usual in such cases,
All sorts of pretty airs and graces
Were played by nymphs, whose hands and arms
Had, or had not, a host of charms:
And there were frowns, as wrists were bared,
And wonderings “how some people dared,”
And much reluctance and disdain,
Which some might feel, and all could feign,

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And witty looks, and whispered guesses,
And running into dark recesses,
And pointless gibes, and toothless chuckles,
And pinching disobedient knuckles,
And cunning thefts by watchful lovers,
Which filled the pockets of the glovers.
'Twas very vain; it seemed that all,
Except the mistress of the Hall,
Had done the utmost they could do,
And made their fingers black and blue,
And there they were, the gem and donor,
Without a mistress, or an owner.

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