The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed :: :: University of Virginia Library

TO THE MEMORY OF HELEN PRAED, THIS COLLECTION OF HER LAMENTED HUSBAND'S POEMS, PUBLISHED IN FULFILMENT OF HER LONG-CHERISHED WISH AND INTENTION IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY HER DAUGHTERS.

LILLIAN.

A FAIRY TALE.

The reader is requested to believe that the following statement is literally true; because the writer is well aware that the circumstances under which Lillian was composed are the only source of its merits, and the only apology for its faults.

At a small party at Cambridge some malicious belles endeavoured to confound their sonnetteering friends, by setting unintelligible and inexplicable subjects for the exercise of their poetical talents. Among many others, the thesis was given out which is the motto of Lillian—

“A dragon's tail is flayed to warm
A headless maiden's heart,”

and the following poem was an attempt to explain the riddle.

The partiality with which it has been honoured in manuscript, and the frequent applications which have been made to the author for copies, must be his excuse for sending it to the press.

It was written, however, with the sole view of amusing the friends in whose circle the idea originated; and to them, with all due humility and devotion, it is inscribed.

Trinity College, Cambridge, October 26, 1822.

“A dragon's tail is flayed to warm
A headless maiden's heart.”
Miss ---

“And he's cleckit this great muckle bird out o' this wee egg! he could wile the very flounders out o' the Frith!”—Mr. Saddletree.

CANTO I.

There was a Dragon in Arthur's time,
(When dragons and griffins were voted prime,)
Of monstrous reputation:
Up and down, and far and wide,
He roamed about in his scaly pride;
And ever, at morn and even-tide,
He made such rivers of blood to run
As shocked the sight of the blushing sun.
And deluged half the nation.

It was a pretty monster too,
With a crimson head, and a body blue,

And wings of a warm and delicate hue,
Like the glow of a deep carnation;
And the terrible tail that lay behind,
Reached out so far as it twisted and twined,
That a couple of dwarfs, of wondrous strength,
Bore, when he travelled, its horrible length,
Like a Duke's at the Coronation.
His mouth had lost one ivory tooth,
Or the Dragon had been, in very sooth,
No insignificant charmer;
And that—alas! he had ruined it,
When on new-year's day, in a hungry fit,
He swallowed a tough and a terrible bit—
Sir Lob, in his brazen armour.
Swift and light were his steps on the ground.
Strong and smooth was his hide around,
For the weapons which the peasants flung
Ever unfelt or unheeded rung,
Arrow and stone and spear,
As snow o'er Cynthia's window flits,
Or raillery of twenty wits
On a fool's unshrinking ear.

In many a battle the beast had been,
Many a blow he had felt and given:
Sir Digorè came with a menacing mien,
But he sent Sir Digorè straight to Heaven;

Stiff and stour were the arms he wore,
Huge the sword he was wont to clasp;
But the sword was little, the armour brittle,
Locked in the coil of the Dragon's grasp.

He came on Sir Florice of Sesseny Land,
Pretty Sir Florice from over the sea,
And smashed him all as he stepped on the sand,
Cracking his head like a nut from the tree.
No one till now had found, I trow,
Any thing good in the scented youth,
Who had taken much pains to be rid of his brains,
Before they were sought by the Dragon's tooth.

He came on the Sheriff of Hereford,
As he sat him down to his Sunday dinner;
And the Sheriff he spoke but this brief word,
“St. Francis be good to a corpulent sinner!”
Fat was he, as a Sheriff might be,
From the crown of his head to the tip of his toe;
But the Sheriff was small, or nothing at all,
When put in the jaws of the Dragon foe.

He came on the Abbot of Arnondale,
As he kneeled him down to his morning devotion;
But the Dragon he shuddered, and turned his tail
About, “with a short uneasy motion.”

Iron and steel, for an early meal,
He stomached with ease, or the Muse is a liar;
But out of all question, he failed in digestion,
If ever he ventured to swallow a friar!

Monstrous brute!—his dread renown
Made whispers and terrors in country and town;
Nothing was babbled by boor or knight
But tales of his civic appetite.
At last, as after dinner he lay,
Hid from the heat of the solar ray
By boughs that had woven an arbour shady,
He chanced to fall in with the Headless Lady.
Headless? alas! 'twas a piteous gibe;
I'll drink Aganippe, and then describe.

Her father had been a stout yeoman,
Fond of his jest and fond of his can,
But never over-wise;
And once, when his cups had been many and deep,
He met with a dragon fast asleep,—
'Twas a Fairy in disguise.
In a dragon's form she had ridden the storm,
The realm of the sky invading;
Sir Grahame's ship was stout and fast,
But the Fairy came on the rushing blast,
And shivered the sails, and shivered the mast,

And down went the gallant ship at last,
With all the crew and lading.
And the Fay laughed out to see the rout,
As the last dim hope was fading;
And this she had done in a love of fun,
And a love of masquerading.
She lay that night in a sunny vale,
And the yeoman found her sleeping;
Fiercely he smote her glittering tail,
But oh! his courage began to fail,
When the Fairy rose all weeping.
“Thou hast lopped,” she said, “beshrew thine nand!
The fairest foot in Fairy-land!

“Thou hast an infant in thine home!—
Never to her shall reason come,
For weeping or for wail,
Till she shall ride with a fearless face
On a living dragon's scale.
And fondly clasp to her heart's embrace
A living dragon's tail.”
The Fairy's form form his shuddering signt
Flowed away in a stream of light.

Disconsolate that youth departed,
Disconsolate and poor;
And wended, chill and broken-hearted,
To his cottage on the moor;

Sadly and silently he knelt
His lonely hearth beside;
Alas! how desolate he felt,
As he hid his face, and cried.
The cradle where the babe was laid
Stood in its own dear nook,
But long—how long!—he knelt, and prayed,
And did not dare to look.
He looked at last; his joy was there.
And slumbering with that placid air
Which only babes and angels wear.
Over the cradle he leaned his head:
The cheek was warm, and the lip was red;
And he felt, he felt, as he saw her lie,
A hope—which was a mockery.
The babe unclosed her eye's pale lid:—
Why doth he start from the sight it hid?
He hath seen in the dim and fitful ray,
That the light of the soul hath gone away!
Sigh nor prayer he uttered there,
In mute and motionless despair,
But he laid him down beside his child,
And Lillian saw him die—and smiled.
The mother? she had gone before;
And in the cottage on the moor,
With none to watch her and caress,
No arm to clasp, no voice to bless,

The witless child grew up alone,
And made all Nature's book her own

If, in the warm and passionate hour
When Reason sleeps in Fancy's bower,
If thou hast ever, ever felt
A dream of delicate beauty melt
Into the heart's recess,
Seen by the soul, and seen by the mind,
But indistinct in its loveliness,
Adored, and not defined;
A bright creation, a shadowy ray,
Fading and flitting in mist away,
Nothing to gaze on, and nothing to hear,
But something to cheat the eye and ear
With a fond conception and joy of both,
So that you might, that hour, be loth
To change for Some one's sweetest kiss
Thy vision of unenduring bliss,
Or lose for Some one's sweetest tone
The murmur thou drinkest all alone—
If such a vision hath ever been thine,
Thou hast a heart that may look on mine!

For oh! the light of my saddened theme
Was like to nought but a poet's dream,

Or the forms that come on the twilight's wing,
Shaped by the soul's imagining.
Beautiful shade, with her tranquil air,
And her thin white arm, and her flowing hair,
And the light of her eye so coldly obscure,
And the hue of her cheek so pale and pure!
Reason and thought she had never known,
Her heart was as cold as a heart of stone;
So you might guess from her eyes' dim rays,
And her idiot laugh, and her vacant gaze.
She wandered about all lone on the heather,
She and the wild heath-birds together;
For Lillian seldom spoke or smiled,
But she sang as sweet as a little child.
Into her song her dreams would throng,
Silly, and wild, and out of place;
And yet that wild and roving song
Entranced the soul in its desolate grace.
And hence the story had ever run
That the fairest of dames was a Headless One.

The pilgrim in his foreign weeds
Would falter in his prayer;
And the monk would pause with his half-told beads
To breathe a blessing there;
The knight would loose his vizor-clasp,
And drop the rein from his nerveless grasp,

And pass his hand across his brow
With a sudden sigh, and a whispered vow,
And marvel Flattery's tale was told,
From a lip so young, to an ear so cold.

She had seen her sixteenth winter out,
When she met with the beast I was singing about:
The Dragon, I told you, had dined that day;
So he gazed upon her as he lay,
Earnestly looking, and looking long,
With his appetite weak, and his wonder strong.
Silent he lay in his motionless coil;
And the song of the Lady was sweet the while:—

“Nonny nonny!—I hear it float,
Innocent bird, thy tremulous note:
It comes from thy home in the eglantine,
And I stay this idle song of mine,
Nonny nonny!—to listen to thine!

“Nonny nonny!—‘Lillian sings
The sweetest of all living things!’
So Sir Launcelot averred;
But surely Sir Launcelot never heard
Nonny nonny!—the natural bird!”

The Dragon he lay in mute amaze,
Till something of kindness crept into his gaze;

He drew the flames of his nostrils in,
He veiled his claws with their speckled skin,
He curled his fangs in a hideous smile;
And the song of the Lady was sweet the while:—

“Nonny nonny!—who shall tell
Where the summer breezes dwell?
Lightly and brightly they breathe and blow,
But whence they come and whither they go,
Nonny nonny!—who shall know?

“Nonny nonny!—I hear your tone,
Put I feel ye cannot read mine own;
And I lift my neck to your fond embraces,
But who hath seen in your resting places
Nonny nonny!—your beautiful faces?”

A moment! and the Dragon came
Crouching down to the peerless dame,
With his fierce red eye so fondly shining,
And his terrible tail so meekly twining,
And the scales on his huge limbs gleaming o'er,
Gayer than ever they gleamed before.
She had won his heart, while she charmed his ear,
And Lillian smiled, and knew no fear.
And see, she mounts between his wings;
(Never a queen had a gaudier throne),

And fairy-like she sits and sings,
Guiding the steed with a touch and a tone.
Aloft, aloft in the clear blue ether,
The dame and the Dragon they soared together;
He bore her away on the breath of the gale—
The two little dwarfs held fast by the tail.

Fanny! a pretty group for drawing;
My dragon like a war-horse pawing,
My dwarfs in a fright, and my girl in an attitude,
Patting the beast in her soulless gratitude.
There; you may try it if you will,
While I drink my coffee, and nib my quill.

END OF CANTO I.

CANTO II.

The sun shone out on hill and grove;
It was a glorious day:
The lords and the ladies were making love,
And the clowns were making hay;
But the Town of Brentford marked with wonder
A lightning in the sky, and thunder,
And thinking ('twas a thinking town)
Some prodigy was coming down,
A mighty mob to Merlin went
To learn the cause of this portent;
And he, a wizard sage, but comical,
Looked through his glasses astronomical,
And puzzled every foolish sconce
By this oracular response:—

“Now the Slayer doth not slay,
Weakness flings her fear away,
Power bears the Powerless,
Pity rides the Pitiless;
Are ye Lovers? are ye brave?
Hear ye this, and seek, and save!
He that would wed the loveliest maid,
Must don the stoutest mail,

For the Rider shall never be sound in the head,
Till the Ridden be maimed in the tail.
Hey, diddle diddle! the cat and the fiddle!
None but a Lover can read me my riddle.”

How kind art thou, and oh! how mighty,
Cupid! thou son of Aphrodite!
By thy sole aid, in old romance,
Heroes and heroines sing and dance;
Of cane and rod there's little need;
They never learn to write or read;
Yet often, by thy sudden light,
Enamoured dames contrive to write;
And often, in the hour of need,
Enamoured youths contrive to read.—
I make a small digression here:
I merely mean to make it clear,
That if Sir Eglamour had wit
To read and construe, bit by bit,
All that the wizard had expressed,
And start conjectures on the rest,
Cupid had sharpened his discerning,
The little god of love,—and learning.
He revolved in his bed what Merlin had said,
Though Merlin had laboured to scatter a veil on't;
And found out the sense of the tail and the head,
Though none of his neighbours could make head or tail on't.

Sir Eglamour was one o' the best
Of Arthur's table round;
He never set his spear in rest,
But a dozen went to the ground.
Clear and warm as the lightning flame,
His valour from his father came,
His cheek was like his mother's;
And his hazel eye more clearly shone
Than any I ever have looked upon,
Save Fanny's,—and two others!

With his spur so bright, and his rein so light,
And his steed so swift and ready,
And his skilful sword, to wound or ward,
And his spear so sure and steady,
He bore him like a British knight
From London to Penzance,
Avenged all weeping women's slight,
And made all giants dance.
And he had travelled far from home,
Had worn a mask at Venice,
Had kissed the Bishop's toe at Rome,
And beat the French at tennis:
Hence he had many a courtly play,
And jeerings and gibes in plenty,
And he wrote more rhymes in a single day
Than Byron or Bowles in twenty.

He clasped to his side his sword of pride,
His sword, whose native polish vied
With many a gory stain;
Keen and bright as a meteor-light;
But not so keen, and not so bright,
As Moultrie's jesting vein.
And his shield he bound his arm around,
His shield, where glowing saffron wound
About a field of blue;
Heavy and thick as a wall of brick,
But not so heavy and not so thick
As the Edinburgh Review.
With a smile and a jest he set out on the quest,
Clad in his stoutest mail,
With his helm of the best, and his spear in the rest,
To flay the Dragon's tail.

The warrior travelled wearily,
Many a league and many a mile;
And the Dragon sailed in the clear blue sky;
And the song of the Lady was sweet the while:—
“My steed and I, my steed and I,
On in the path of the winds we fly,
And I chase the planets that wander at even,
And bathe my hair in the dews of heaven!
Beautiful stars, so thin and bright,
Exquisite visions of vapour and light,
I love ye all with a sister's love,

And I rove with ye wherever ye rove,
And I drink your changeless, endless song,
The music ye make as ye wander along!
Oh! let me be, as one of ye,
Floating for aye on your liquid sea;
And I'll feast with you on the purest rain
To cool my weak and wildered brain,
And I'll give you the loveliest lock of my hair
For a little spot in your realm of air!”

The Dragon came down when the morn shone bright,
And slept in the beam of the sun;
Fatigued, no doubt, with his airy flight,
As I with my jingling one.
With such a monstrous adversary
Sir Eglamour was far too wary
To think of bandying knocks;
He came on his foe as still as death,
Walking on tiptoe, and holding his breath,
And instead of drawing his sword from his sheath,
He drew a pepper-box!
The pepper was as hot as flame,
The box of wondrous size;
He gazed one moment on the dame,
Then, with a sure and a steady aim,
Full in the Dragon's truculent phiz
He flung the scorching powder—whiz!
And darkened both his eyes!

Have you not seen a little kite
Rushing away on its paper wing
To mix with the wild winds' quarrelling?
Up it soars with an arrowy flight,
Till, weak and unsteady,
Torn by the eddy,
It dashes to earth from its hideous height.
Such was the rise of the beast in his pain,
Such was his falling to earth again;
Upward he shot, but he saw not his path,
Blinded with pepper, and blinded with wrath;
One struggle—one vain one—of pain and emotion,
And he shot back again, “like a bird of the ocean!”
Long he lay in a trance that day,
And alas! he did not wake before
The cruel Knight, with skill and might,
Had lopped and flayed the tail he wore.

Twelve hours by the chime he lay in his slime,
More utterly blind, I trow,
Than a Polypheme in the olden time,
Or a politician now.
He sped, as soon as he could see,
To the Paynim bowers of Rosalie;
For there the Dragon had hope to cure,
By the tinkling rivulets ever pure,
By the glowing sun, and fragrant gale,
His wounded honour,—and wounded tail!

He hied him away to the perfumed spot;
The little dwarfs clung—where the tail was not!

The damsel gazed on that young Knight,
With something of terror, but more of delight;
Much she admired the gauntlets he wore,
Much the device that his buckler bore,
Much the feathers that danced on his crest,
But most the baldric that shone on his breast.
She thought the Dragon's pilfered scale
Was fairer far than the warrior's mail,
And she lifted it up with her weak white arm,
Unconscious of its hidden charm,
And round her throbbing bosom tied,
In mimicry of warlike pride.

Gone is the spell that bound her!
The talisman hath touched her heart,
And she leaps with a fearful and fawn-like start
As the shades of glamoury depart;
Strange thoughts are glimmering round her;
Deeper and deeper her cheek is glowing,
Quicker and quicker her breath is flowing,
And her eye gleams out from its long dark lashes
Fast and full, unnatural flashes;
For hurriedly and wild
Doth Reason pour her hidden treasures,

Of human griefs, and human pleasures,
Upon her new-found child.
And “Oh!” she saith, “my spirit doth seem
To have risen to-day from a pleasant dream;
A long, long dream! but I feel it breaking;
Painfully sweet is the throb of waking:”
And then she laughed, and wept again;
While, gazing on her heart's first rain,
Bound in his turn by a magic chain,
The silent youth stood there:
Never had either been so blest;—
You that are young may picture the rest,
You that are young and fair.
Never before, on this warm land,
am e Love and Reason hand in hand.

When you were blest, in childhood's years,
With the brightest hopes, and the lightest fears,
Have you not wandered, in your dream,
Where a greener glow was on the ground,
And a clearer breath in the air around,
And a purer life in the gay sunbeam,
And a tremulous murmur in every tree,
And a motionless sleep on the quiet sea?
And have you not lingered, lingered still,
All unfettered in thought and will,
A fair and cherished boy;

Until you felt it pain to part
From the wild creations of your art,
Until your young and innocent heart
Seemed bursting with its joy?
And then, oh then, hath your waking eye
Opened in all its ecstacy,
And seen your mother leaning o'er you,
The loved and loving one that bore you,
Giving her own, her fond caress,
And looking her eloquent tenderness?—
Was it not Heaven to fly from the scene
Where the heart in the vision of night had been,
And drink, in one o'erflowing kiss,
Your deep reality of bliss?
Such was Lillian's passionate madness,
Such the calm of her waking gladness.

Enough! my Tale is all too long:
Fair Children, if the trifling song,
That flows for you to-night,
Hath stolen from you one gay laugh,
Or given your quiet hearts to quaff
One cup of young delight,
Pay ye the Rhymer for his toils
In the coinage of your golden smiles,
And treasure up his idle verse
With the stories ye loved from the lips of your nurse.

GOG.

“A most delicate monster!”—The Tempest.

CANTO I.

King Arthur, as the legends sing,
Was a right brave and merry king,
And had a wondrous reputation
Through this right brave and merry nation.
His ancient face, and ancient clothes,
His tables round, and rounder oaths,
His crown and cup, his feasts and fights,
His pretty Queen and valiant knights,
Would make me up the raciest scene
That is, or will be, or has been.
These points, and others not a few,
Of great importance to the view,
As, how King Arthur valued woman,
And how King Arthur threshed the Roman,
And how King Arthur built a hall,
And how King Arthur played at ball,
I'll have the prudence to omit,
Since brevity's the soul of wit.
Oh! Arthur's days were blessed days,
When all was wit, and worth, and praise,

And planting thrusts, and planting oaks,
And cracking nuts, and cracking jokes,
And turning out the toes, and tiltings,
And jousts, and journeyings, and jiltings.
Lord! what a stern and stunning rout,
As tall Adventure strode about,
Rang through the land! for there were duels
For love of dames, and love of jewels;
And steeds, that carried knight and prince
As never steeds have carried since;
And heavy lords and heavy lances;
And strange unfashionable dances;
And endless bustle and turmoil
In vain disputes for fame or spoil.
Manners and roads were very rough;
Armour and beeves were very tough;
And then,—the brightest figures far
In din or dinner, peace or war,—
Dwarfs sang to ladies in their teens,
And giants grew as thick as beans!

One of these worthies, in my verse,
I mean, O Clio! to rehearse:
He was much talked of in his time,
And sung of too in monkish rhyme;
So, lest my pen should chance to err,
I'll quote his ancient chronicler.
Thus Friar Joseph paints my hero:

“Addictus cædibus et mero,
Impavidus, luxuriosus,
Preces, jejuniaque perosus,
Metum ubique vultu jactans,
Boves ubique manu mactans,
Tauros pro cœna vorans, post hos
Libenter edens pueros tostos,
Anglorum, et (ni fallit error)
Ipsius Regis sæpe terror,
Equorum equitumque captor,
Incola rupis, ingens raptor
Episcopalium honorum,
Damnatus hostis Monachorum!”

Such was his eulogy! The fact is,
He had a most outrageous practice
Of running riot, bullying, beating,
Behaving rudely, killing, eating;
He wore a black beard, like a jew's,
And stood twelve feet without his shoes;
He used to sleep through half the day,
And then went out to kill and slay;
At night he drank a deal of grog,
And slept again;—his name was Gog.

He was the son of Gorboduc,
And was a boy of monstrous pluck;

For once, when in a morning early
He happened to be bruising barley,
A knight came by with sword and spear,
And halted in his mid-career:
The youngster looked so short and pliant,
He never dreamed he was a giant,
And so he pulled up with a jerk,
And called young bruiser from his work:—
“Friend, can you lead me by the rein
To Master Gorboduc's domain?—
I mean to stop the country's fears,
And knock his house about his ears!”
The urchin chuckled at the joke,
And grinned acutely as he spoke:
“Sir Knight, I'll do it if I can;
Just get behind me in my pan;
I'm off,—I stop but once to bait,
I'll set you down before the gate.”
Sir Lolly swallowed all the twang,
He leaped into the mortar—bang!
And when he saw him in the vessel,
Gog beat his brains out with the pestle.

This was esteemed a clever hit,
And showed the stripling had a wit;
Therefore his father spared no arts
To cultivate such brilliant parts.

No giant ever went before
Beyond his “two and two make four,”
But Gog possessed a mind gigantic,
And grasped a learning quite romantic.
'Tis certain that he used to sport
The language that they spoke at court;
Had something of a jaunty air,
That men so tall can seldom wear;
Unless he chanced to need some victuals,
He was a pleasant match at skittles;
And if he could have found a horse
To bear him through a single course,
I think he might have brought the weight
'Gainst all that Britain counted great.
In physic he was sage indeed,
He used to blister and to bleed,
Made up strange plasters—had been known
To amputate or set a bone,
And had a notable device
For curing colic in a trice
By making patients jump a wall,
And get a most salubrious fall.
Then in philosophy, 'twas said,
He got new fancies in his head;
Had reckonings of the sea's profundity,
And dreams about the earth's rotundity;
In argument was quite a Grecian,
And taught the doctrine of cohesion.

This knowledge, as one often sees,
Softened his manners by degrees;
He came to have a nicer maw,
And seldom ate his mutton raw;
And if he had upon his board
At once a peasant and a lord,
He called the lord his dainty meat,
And had him devilled for a treat.

Old Gorboduc, the legends say,
Happened to go to pot one day;
The how and why remains a question;
Some say he died of indigestion
From swallowing a little boat
In drinking dry Sir Toby's moat.
Others assert that Dame Ulrica
(Whom he confined beneath a beaker,
Having removed her from her cottage
To stew her in a mess of pottage)
Upset her prison in the night,
And played Ulysses out of spite,
So that he woke in great surprise
With two sharp needles in his eyes.
Perhaps Ulrica may have lied;
At all events—the giant died,
Bequeathing to his son and heir,
Illustrious Gog, the pious care

To lord it o'er his goods and chattels,
And wield his club and fight his battles.

'Twould take an Iliad, Sirs, to tell
The numerous feats on flood and fell,
At which my hero tried his hand;
He was the terror of the land,
And did a thousand humorous things,
Fit to delight the ear of kings;
I cull what I consider best,
And pass in silence o'er the rest.

There was a Lady sent from Wales,
With quiet sea, and favouring gales,
To land upon the English shore,
And marry with Sir Paladore.
It seems she sailed from Milford Haven,
On board the Bittern, Captain Craven,
And smiles, and nods, and gratulation,
Attended on her embarkation.
But when the ship got out from land,
The Captain took her by the hand,
And with a brace of shocking oaths,
He led her to her chest of clothes.
They paused!—he scratching at his chin,
As if much puzzled to begin:
She o'er the box in stupor leaning,
As if she couldn't guess his meaning.

Then thus the rogue the silence broke—
His whiskers wriggled as he spoke:—
“Look out an extra gown and shift;
You're going to be turned adrift;
As many gewgaws as you please,
Only don't bounce upon your knees;
It's very fine, but don't amuse,
And isn't of the smallest use.
Ho there! above! put down the boat!—
In half an hour you'll be afloat;
I wouldn't have you lose a minute;—
There—put a little victuals in it;—
You think I'm playing off a sham,
But—split my vitals if I am!”

Struggling and tears in vain were tried,
He hauled her to the vessel's side,
And still the horrid brute ran on,
Exclaiming in ferocious tone—
“You needn't hollow to the crew,
Be quiet, it will never do;—
Pray spare your breath;—come wind and weather,
We all are sworn to this together!
Don't talk us round! 'cause why? you can't!—
Oh! sink my timbers if we an't!
So—gently!—mind your footing—there!
You'll find the weather very fair;

You'd better keep a sharp look-out,
There are some ugly reefs about;
Stay!—what provision have they made ye?
I wouldn't have ye famished, Lady!
Dick! lend a hand, ye staring oaf,
And heave us down another loaf;
Here are two bustards—take 'em both;
You've got a famous pot of broth;
You'd better use the sculls—you'll find
You've got a deuced little wind;
Now!—don't stand blubbering at me,
But trim the boat and put to sea.”—
He spoke! regardless of her moan,
They left her in the boat, alone!
According to our modern creed,
It was a cruel thing, indeed;
Unless some villain bribed them to it,
I can't conceive what made them do it.

It was a very cruel thing!—
She was the daughter of a king;
Though it appears that kings were then
But little more than common men.
She was a handsome girl withal,
Well formed, majestic, rather tall;
She had dark eyes (I like them dark),
And in them was an angry spark,

That came, and went, and came again,
Like lightning in the pause of rain;
Her robe adorned, but not concealed,
The shape it shrouded, yet revealed;
It chanced her ivory neck was bare,
But clusters rich of jetty hair
Lay like a garment scattered there;
She had upon her pale white brow
A look of pride, that, even now
Gazed round upon her solitude,
Hopeless perhaps, but unsubdued,
As if she thought the dashing wave,
That swelled beneath, was born her slave.

She felt not yet a touch of fear,
But didn't know which way to steer;
She thought it prudent to get back:
The wind due east!—she said she'd tack;
And, though she had a tinge of doubt,
She laughed, and put the helm about.

The wind went down—a plaguy calm;
The Princess felt a rising qualm;
The boat lay sleeping on the sea,
The sky looked blue,—and so did she!
The night came on, and still the gale
Breathed vainly on her leather sail;

It scarcely would have stirred a feather:
Heaven and her hopes grew dark together;
She slept!—I don't know how she dined,—
And light returned, and brought no wind;
She seized her oars at break of day,
And thought she made a little way;
The skin was rubbed from off her thumb,
And she had no Diaculum;
(Diaculum, my story says,
Was not invented in those days;)
At last, not being used to pull,
She lost her temper—and her scull.

A long long time becalmed she lay;
And still untired, from day to day
She formed a thousand anxious wishes,
And bit her nails, and watched the fishes;
To give it up she still was loth;—
She ate the bustards and the broth;
And when they failed, she sighed and said,
“I'll make my dinner on the bread!”
She ate the bread, and thought with sorrow
“There's nothing left me for to-morrow!”

She pulled her lover's letter out,
And turned its vellum leaves about;
It was a billet-doux of fire,
Scarce thicker than a modern quire;

And thus it ran—“I never suppe
Because mine heatte dothe eatte me uppe:
And eke, dear Loue, I never dine,
Nor drinke atte Courte a cuppe of wine:
For daye and nighte, I telle you true,
I feede uponne my Loue for you.”
Alas! that Lady fair, who long
Had felt her hunger rather strong,
Said (and her eye with tears was dim),
“I've no such solid love for him!
And so she thought it might be better
To sup upon her lover's letter.

She ate the treasure quite or nearly,
From “Beauteous Queen!” to “yours sincerely;
She thought upon her father's crown.
And then despair came o'er her!—down
Upon the bottom-boards she lay,
And veiled her from the look of day;
The sea-birds flapped their wings, and she
Looked out upon the tumbling sea;
And there was nothing on its face
But wide, interminable space,
And so she gave a piteous cry—
The murmuring waters made reply!

Alas! another morning came,
And brought no food!—the hapless dame

Thought, as she watched the lifeless sail,
That she should die “withouten fail;”
Another morn—and not a whiff!
The Lady grew so weak and stiff
That she could hardly move her stumps;
At last she fed upon her pumps!
And called upon her absent Lord,
And thought of going overboard:
As the dusk evening veiled the sky
She said, “I'm ready now to die!”
She saw the dim light fade away,
And fainted, as she kneeled to pray.

I sing not where and how the boat
With its pale load contrived to float,
Nor how it struck off Hartland Point,
And 'gan to leak at every joint;
'Twill be enough, I think, to tell ye
Linda was shaken to a jelly,
And when she woke from her long sleep,
Was lying in the Giant's keep,
While at a distance, like a log,
Her captor snored,—prodigious Gog!

He spared as yet his captive's life;
She wasn't ready for the knife,
For toil, and famine, and the sun
Had worn her to a skeleton;

He kept her carefully in view,
And fed her for a week or two;
Then, in a sudden hungry freak,
He felt her arm, and neck, and cheek,
And being rather short of meat,
Cried out that she was fit to eat.
The Monster saw the bright dark eye
That met his purpose fearlessly;
He saw the form that did not quail,
He saw the look that did not fail,
And the white arm that tranquil lay,
And never stirred to stop or stay;
He changed his mind,—threw down the kmfe,
And swore that she should be his wife.

Linda, like many a modern Miss,
Began to veer about at this;
She feared not roasting! but a ring!—
O Lord! 'twas quite another thing;
She'd rather far be fried, than tied,
And make a sausage, than a bride;
She had no hand at argument,
And so she tried to circumvent.

“My Lord,” said she, “I know a plaster,
The which before my sad disaster
I kept most carefully in store
For my own knight, Sir Paladore;
It is a mixture mild and thin;
But, when 'tis spread upon the skin,
It makes a surface white as snow
Sword-proof thenceforth from top to toe,
I've sworn to wed with none, my Lord,
Who can be harmed by human sword.
The ointment shall be yours! I'll make it,
Mash it and mix it, rub and bake it;
You look astonished!—you shall see,
And try its power upon me.”

She bruised some herbs; to make them hot
She put them in the Giant's pot;
Some mystic words she uttered there,
But whether they were charm or prayer
The convent legend hath not said;
A little of the salve she spread
Upon her neck, and then she stood
In reverential attitude,
With head bent down, and lips compressed,
And hands enfolded on her breast;
“Strike!” and the stroke in thunder fell
Full on the neck that met it well;

“Strike!” the red blood started out,
Like water from a water-spout;
A moment's space—and down it sunk,
That headless, pale, and quivering trunk,
And the small head with its gory wave
Flew in wild eddies round the cave.

You think I shouldn't laugh at this;
You know not that a scene of bliss
To close my song is yet in store;
For Merlin to Sir Paladore
The head and trunk in air conveyed,
And spoke some magic words, and made.
By one brief fillip of his wand,
The happiest pair in all the land.

The Giant—but I think I've done
Enough of him for Canto One.

END OF CANTO I.

The latter part of Linda's history
In Ariosto's work is an ingredient;
I can't imagine how my monks and he
Happened to hit upon the same expedient;
You'll find it in ‘Orlando Furioso;’
But Mr. Hoole's translation is but so so.

CANTO II.

The morn is laughing in the sky,
The sun hath risen jocundly,
Brightly the dancing beam hath shone
On the cottage of clay and the abbey of stone;
As on the redolent air they float,
The songs of the birds have a gayer note,
And the fall of the waters hath breathed around
A purer breath and a sweeter sound;
And why is Nature so richly drest
In the flowery garb she loveth best?
Peasant and monk will tell you the tale!
There is a wedding in Nithys-dale.

With his green vest around him flung,
His bugle o'er his shoulders hung
And roses blushing in his hair,
The Minstrel-Boy is waiting there!
O'er his young cheek and earnest brow
Pleasure hath spread a warmer glow,
And love his fervid look hath dight
In something of ethereal light:
And still the Minstrel's pale blue eye
Is looking out impatiently

To see his glad and tender bride
Come dancing o'er the hillock's side:
For look! the sun's all-cheering ray
Shines proudly on a joyous day;
And, ere his setting, young Le Fraile
Shall wed the Lily of Nithys-dale.

A moment, and he saw her come,
That maiden, from her latticed home,
With eyes all love, and lips apart,
And faltering step, and beating heart.
She came, and joined her cheek to his
In one prolonged and rapturous kiss,
And while it thrilled through heart and limb
The world was nought to her or him!
Fair was the boy; a woman's grace
Beamed o'er his figure and his face;
His red lips had a maiden's pout,
And his light eyes looked sweetly out,
Scattering a thousand vivid flashes
Beneath their long and jetty lashes;—
And she, the still and timid bride
That clung so fondly to his side,
Might well have seemed, to Fancy's sight,
Some slender thing of air or light!
So white an arm, so pale a cheek,
A look so eloquently meek,

A neck of such a marble hue,
An eye of such transparent blue,
Could never, never, take their birth
From parentage of solid earth!
He that had searched fair England round
A lovelier pair had never found
Than that Minstrel-Boy, the young Le Fraile,
And Alice, the Lily of Nithys-dale!

Hark! hark! a sound!—it flies along,
How fearfully!—a trembling throng
Come round the bride in wild amaze,
All ear and eye to hear and gaze;
Again it came, that sound of wonder,
Rolling along like distant thunder;
“That barbarous growl, that horrid noise—
Was it indeed a human voice?
The man must have a thousand tongues,
And bellows of brass by way of lungs!”
Each to his friend, in monstrous fuss,
The staring peasants whispered thus:
“Hark! hark! another echoing shout!”
And, as the boobies stared about,
Just leaping o'er a mountain's brow,
They saw the Brute that made the row;
Two meadows and a little bog
Divided them from cruel Gog!

Maiden and matron, boy and man,
You can't conceive how fast they ran!
And as they scampered, you might hear
A thousand sounds of pain and fear.
“I get so tired.”—“Where's my son?”—
“How fast the horrid beast comes on!”—
“What plaguy teeth!”—“You heard him roar?
I never puffed so much before!”
“I can't imagine what to do!”—
“Whom has he caught?”—“I've lost my shoe!”—
“Oh! I'm a sinful”—“Father Joe
Do just absolve me as we go!”
“Absolve you here? pray hold your pother:
I wouldn't do it for my mother!
A pretty time to stop and shrive,
Zounds! we shall all be broiled alive!
I feel the spit!”—“Nay, Father, nay,
Don't talk in such a horrid way!”—
“O mighty Love, to thee I bow!
Oh! give me wings, and save me now!”—
“A fig for Love!”—“Don't talk of figs!
He'll stick us all like sucking-pigs,
Or skin us like a dish of eels”—
“Run—run—he's just upon your heels!”—
“I promise the Abbey a silver cup.
Holy St. Jerome, trip him up!”—
“I promise the Abbey a silver crown!
Holy St. Jerome, knock him down!”—

The Monster came, and singled out
The tenderest bit in all the rout;
Spite of her weeping and her charms,
He tore her from her lover's arms:
Woe for that hapless Minstrel-Boy!
Where is his pride—his hope—his joy?
His eye is wet, his cheek is pale;
He hath lost the Lily of Nithys-dale!

It chanced that day two travelling folk
Had spread their cloth beneath an oak,
And sat them gaily down to dine
On good fat buck and ruddy wine.
One was a Friar, fat and sleek,
With pimpled nose and rosy cheek,
And belly, whose capacious paunch
Told tales of many a buried haunch.
He was no Stoic!—In his eye
Frolic fought hard with gravity;
And though he strove in conversation
To talk as best beseemed his station,
Yet did he make some little slips;
And in the corners of his lips
There were some sly officious dimples,
Which spake no love for roots and simples.
The other was a hardy Knight,
Caparisoned for instant fight;

You might have deemed him framed of stone
So huge he was of limb and bone;
His short black hair, unmixed with grey,
Curled closely on his forehead lay;
His brow was swarthy, and a scar,
Not planted there in recent war,
Had drawn one long and blushing streak
Over the darkness of his cheek;
The warrior's voice was full and bold,
His gorgeous arms were rich with gold;
But weaker shoulders soon would fail
Beneath that cumbrous mass of mail;
Yet from his bearing you might guess
He oft had worn a softer dress,
And laid aside that nodding crest
To lap his head on lady's breast.

The meal of course was short and hasty,
And they had half got through the pasty,
When hark!—a shriek rung loud and shrill;
The churchman jumped, and dropped the gill;
The soldier started from the board,
And twined his hand around his sword.
While they stood wondering at the din,
The Minstrel-Boy came running in;
With trembling frame and rueful face
He bent his knee, and told his case:—

“The Monster's might away hath riven
My bliss on earth, my hope in Heaven;
And there is nothing left me now
But doubt above, and grief below!
My heart and hers together fly,
And she must live, or I must die!
Look at the caitiff's face of pride,
Look at his long and haughty stride;
Look how he bears her o'er hill and vale,
My Beauty, the Lily of Nithys-dale!”

They gazed around them;—Monk and Knight
Were startled at that awful sight!
They never had the smallest notion
How vast twelve feet would look in motion.
Dark as the midnight's deepest gloom,
Swift as the breath of the Simoom,
That hill of flesh was moving on;
And oh! the sight of horror won
A shriek from all our three beholders,—
He bore the maid upon his shoulders!
“Now,” said the Knight, “by all the fame
That ever clung to Arthur's name,
I'll do it,—or I'll try, at least,
To win her from that monstrous Beast.”
“Sir,” said the Friar to the Knight,
“Success will wait upon the right;

I feel much pity for the youth,
And though, to tell the honest truth,
I'm rather used to drink than slay,
I'll aid you here as best I may!”
They bade the minstrel blow a blast,
To stop the monster as he passed;
Gog was quite puzzled!—“Zounds—I'feg!
My friend—piano!—let me beg!”
Then in a rage towards the place
He strode along a rattling pace;
Firm on the ground his foot he planted,
And “wondered what the deuce they wanted!”

No blockhead was that holy man,
He cleared his throat, and thus began:—
“O pessime!—that is, I pray,
Discede—signifying, stay!
Damno—that is, before you go,
Sis comes in convivio:
Abi—that is, set down the lass;
Monstrum—that is, you'll take a glass?
Oh, holy Church!—that is, I swear
You never looked on nicer fare;
Informe—horridum—immane!
That is, the wine's as good as any;
Apage!—exorcizo te!
That is, it came from Burgundy;

We both are anxious—execrande!
To drink your health—abominande!
And then my comrade means to put
His falchion through your occiput!”
The Giant stared (and who would not?)
To find a monk so wondrous hot;
So fierce a stare you never saw;
At last the brute's portentous jaw
Swung like a massy creaking hinge,
And then, beneath its shaggy fringe
Rolling about each wondrous eye,
He scratched his beard and made reply:—
“Bold is the Monk, and bold the Knight,
That wishes with Gog to drink, or fight,
For I have been from east to west,
And battled with King Arthur's best,
And never found I friend or foe
To stand my cup—or bear my blow!”
“Most puissant Gog! although I burst,”
Exclaimed the Monk, “I'll do the first;”
And ere a moment could be reckoned,
The Knight chimed in—“I'll try the second.”

The Giant, ere he did the job,
Took a huge chain from out his fob:
He bound his captive to a tree;
And young Le Fraile came silently,

And marked how all her senses slept,
And leaned upon her brow, and wept;
He kissed her lip, but her lip was grown
As coldly white as a marble stone;
He met her eye, but its vacant gaze
Had not the light of its living rays;
Yet still that trembling lover pressed
The maiden to his throbbing breast,
Till consciousness returned again,
And the tears flowed out like summer rain;
There was the bliss of a hundred years
In the rush of those delicious tears!

The helm from off the Warrior's head
Is doffed to bear the liquor red:
That casque, I trow, is deep and high,
But the Monk and the Giant shall drain it dry;
And which of the two, when the feat is done,
Shall keep his legs at set of sun?

They filled to the brim that helm of gold,
And the Monk hath drained its ample hold;
Silent and slow the liquor fell,
As into some capacious well:
Tranquilly flowing down it went,
And made no noise in its long descent;
And it leaves no trace of its passage now,
But the stain on his lip, and the flush on his brow.

They filled to the brim that helm of gold,
And the Giant hath drained its ample hold;
Through his dark jaws the purple ocean
Ran with a swift and restless motion,
And the roar that heralded on its track
Seemed like the burst of a cataract.
Twice for each was the fountain filled,
Twice by each was the red flood swilled;
The Monk is as straight as a poplar tree,
Gog is as giddy as Gog may be!

“Now try we a buffet!” exclaimed the Knight,
And rose collected in his might,
Crossing his arms, and clenching his hand,
And fixing his feet on their firmest stand.
The Giant struck a terrible stroke,
But it lighted on the forest-oak;
And bough and branch of the ancient tree
Shook, as he smote it, wondrously:
His gauntleted hand the Warrior tried;
Full it fell on the Giant's side;
He sank to earth with a hideous shock,
Like the ruin of a crumbling rock,
And that quivering mass was senseless laid
In the pit its sudden fall had made.

That stranger Knight hath gone to the tree
To set the trembling captive free;

Thrice hath he smitten with might and main,
And burst the lock, and shivered the chain;
But the knotty trunk, as the warrior strove,
Wrenched from his hand the iron glove,
And they saw the gem on his finger's ring,
And they bent the knee to England's King.
“Up! up!” he said, “for the sun hath passed,
The shadows of night are falling fast,
And still the wedding shall be to-day,
And a King shall give the bride away!”

The abbey bells are ringing
With a merry, merry tone;
And the happy boors are singing
With a music all their own;
Joy came in the morning, and fled at noon;
But he smiles again by the light of the moon:
That Minstrel-Boy, the young Le Fraile,
Hath wedded the Lily of Nithys-dale!

THE TROUBADOUR.

“Le Troubadour
Brulant d'amour.”
French Ballad.

CANTO I.

In sooth it was a glorious day
For vassal and for lord,
When Cœur de Lion had the sway
In battle and at board.
He was indeed a royal one,
A Prince of Paladins;
Hero of triumph and of tun,
Of noisy fray and noisy fun,
Broad shoulders and broad grins.
You might have looked from east to west,
And then from north to south,
And never found an ampler breast,
Never an ampler mouth,
A softer tone for lady's ear,
A daintier lip for syrup,
Or a ruder grasp for axe and spear,
Or a firmer foot in stirrup.
A ponderous thing was Richard's can,
And so was Richard's boot;

And Saracens and liquor ran,
Where'er he set his foot.
So fiddling here, and fighting there,
And murdering time and tune,
With sturdy limb, and listless air,
And gauntleted hand, and jewelled hair,
Half monarch, half buffon,
He turned away from feast to fray,
From quarrelling to quaffing,
So great in prowess and in pranks,
So fierce and funny in the ranks,
That Saladin the Soldan said,
Whene'er that mad-cap Richard led,
Alla! he held his breath for dread,
And burst his sides for laughing!

At court, the humour of a king
Is always voted “quite the thing;”
Morals and cloaks are loose or laced
According to the Sovereign's taste,
And belles and banquets both are drest
Just as his majesty thinks best.
Of course in that delightful age,
When Richard ruled the roast,
Cracking of craniums was the rage,
And beauty was the toast.
Ay! all was laugh, and life, and love;
And lips and shrines were kissed;

And vows were ventured in the grove,
And lances in the list;
And boys roamed out in sunny weather
To weave a wreath and rhyme together,
While dames in silence, and in satin,
Lay listening to the soft French-Latin,
And flung their sashes and their sighs
From odour-breathing balconies.

From those bright days of love and glory
I take the hero of my story.
A wandering Troubadour was he;
He bore a name of high degree,
And learned betimes to slay and sue,
As knights of high degree should do.
While vigour nerved his buoyant arm,
And youth was his to cheat and charm,
Being immensely fond of dancing,
And somewhat given to romancing,
He roamed about through towers and towns,
Apostrophizing smiles and frowns,
Singing sweet staves to beads and bonnets,
And dying, day by day, in sonnets.
Flippant and fair, and fool enough,
And careless where he met rebuff.
Poco-curante in all cases
Of furious foes, or pretty faces,
With laughing lip, and jocund eye,

And studied tear, and practised sigh,
And ready sword, and ready verse,
And store of ducats in his purse,
He sinned few crimes, loved many times,
And wrote a hundred thousand rhymes!

Summers twice eight had passed away
Since in his nurse's arms he lay,
A rosy, roaring child,
While all around was noisy mirth,
And logs blazed up upon the hearth,
And bonfires on the wild;
And vassals drank the brown bowl dry,
And cousins knew “the mother's eye,”
And wrinkled crones spoke prophecy,
And his brave father smiled.
Summers twice eight had passed away;
His sire's thin locks grew very gray;
He lost his song, and then his shout,
And seldom saw his bottle out.
Then all the menials straight began
To sorrow for “the poor old man,”
Took thought about his shirts and shoe-ties,
And pestered him with loves and duties.
Young Roger laced a crimson row
Of cushions on his saddle-bow;
Red Wyke at Christmas mingled up
More sugar in the wassail-cup;

Fair Margaret laid finer sheets;
Fat Catharine served richer sweets;
And all, from scullion up to squire,
Who stirred his cup or kitchen fire,
Seemed by their doings to determine
The knight should ne'er be food for vermin.
All would not do; the knight grew thinner,
And loved his bed, and loathed his dinner;
And when he muttered—“Becket—beast,
Bring me the posset—and a priest,”
Becket looked grave, and said “good lack!”
And went to ask the price of black.

Masses and medicines both were bought,
Masses and medicines both were naught;
Sir Hubert's race was run;
As best beseemed a warrior tall,
He died within his ancient hall:
And he was blest by Father Paul,
And buried by his son.
'Twere long to tell the motley gear
That waited on Sir Hubert's bier;
For twenty good miles round
Maiden and matron, knave and knight,
All rode or ran to see the sight;
Yeomen with horse and hound,
Gossips in grief and grogram clad,
Young warriors galloping like mad,

Priors and pedlars, pigs and pyxes,
Cooks, choristers, and crucifixes,
Wild urchins cutting jokes and capers,
And taper shapes, and shapely tapers.
The mighty barons of the land
Brought pain in heart, and four-in-hand;
And village maids, with looks of woe,
Turned out their mourning, and their toe.
The bell was rung, the hymn was sung,
On the oak chest the dust was flung;
And then, beneath the chapel-stones,
With a gilt scutcheon o'er his bones,
Escaped from feather-beds and fidget,
Sir Hubert slept with Lady Bridget.

The mob departed: cold and cloud
Shed on the vault their icy shroud,
And night came dark and dreary;
But there young Vidal lingered still,
And kept his fast, and wept his fill,
Though the wind in the chapel was very chill,
And Vidal very weary.
Low moaned the bell; the torch-light fell
In fitful and faint flashes;
And he lay on the stones, where his father's bones
Were mouldering now to ashes;
And vowed to be, on earth and sea,
Whatever stars shone o'er him,

A trusty knight, in love and fight
As his father had been before him
Then in the silence of the night
Passionate grief was his delight;
He thought of all the brave and fair
Who slept their shadowy slumber there;
And that sweet dotage held him long.
Ere sorrow found her voice in song.

It was an ancient thing; a song
His heart had sung in other years,
When boyhood had its idle throng
Of guiltless smiles, and guileless tears;
But never had its music seemed
So sweet to him, as when to-night
All lorn and lone, he kneeled and dreamed,
Before the taper's holy light,
Of many and mysterious things,
His cradle's early visitings,
The melancholy tones, that blest
The pillow of his sinless rest,
The melody, whose magic numbers
Broke in by snatches on his slumbers,
When earth appeared so brightly dim,
And all was bliss, and all for him,
And every sight and every sound
Had heaven's own day-light flowing round.

“My mother's grave, my mother's grave!
Oh! dreamless is her slumber there,
And drowsily the banners wave
O'er her that was so chaste and fair;
Yea! love is dead, and memory faded!
But when the dew is on the brake,
And silence sleeps on earth and sea.
And mourners weep, and ghosts awake,
Oh! then she cometh back to me,
In her cold beauty darkly shaded!

“I cannot guess her face or form;
But what to me is form or face?
I do not ask the weary worm
To give me back each buried grace
Of glistening eyes, or trailing tresses!
I only feel that she is here,
And that we meet, and that we part;
And that I drink within mine ear,
And that I clasp around my heart,
Her sweet still voice, and soft caresses:

“Not in the waking thought by day,
Not in the sightless dream by night,
Do the mild tones and glances play,
Of her who was my cradle's light!
But in some twilight of calm weather

She glides, by fancy dimly wrought,
A glittering cloud, a darkling beam,
With all the quiet of a thought,
And all the passion of a dream,
Linked in a golden spell together!”

Oh! Vidal's very soul did weep
Whene'er that music, like a charm,
Brought back from their unlistening sleep
The kissing lip and clasping arm.
But quiet tears are worth, to some,
The richest smiles in Christendom;
And Vidal, though in folly's ring
He seemed so weak and wild a thing,
Had yet an hour, when none were by,
For reason's thought, and passion's sigh,
And knew and felt, in heart and brain,
The Paradise of buried pain!

And Vidal rose at break of day,
And found his heart unbroken;
And told his beads, and went away,
On a steed he had bespoken;
His bonnet he drew his eyelids o'er,
For tears were like to blind him;
And he spurred Sir Guy o'er mount and moor,
With a long dull journey all before,
And a short gay squire behind him.

And the neighbourhood much marvel had;
And all who saw did say,
The weather and the roads were bad,
And either Vidal had run mad,
Or Guy had run away!
Oh! when a cheek is to be dried,
All pharmacy is folly;
And Vidal knew, for he had tried,
There's nothing like a rattling ride
For curing melancholy!

Three days he rode all mad and mute;
And when the sun did pass,
Three nights he supped upon dry fruit,
And slept upon wet grass.
Beneath an oak, whose hundred years
Had formed fit shade for talk or tears,
On the fourth day he lay at noon,
And put his gilt guitar in tune;
When suddenly swept by,
In gold and silver all arrayed,
A most resplendent cavalcade;
Baron and Beauty, Knave and Knight,
And lips of love, and eyes of light,
All blended dazzlingly.
Ah! all the world that day came out,
With horse and horn, and song and shout;
And belles and bouquets gaily bloomed,

And all were proud, and all perfumed,
And gallants, as the humour rose,
Talked any nonsense that they chose,
And damsels gave the reins for fun
Alike to palfrey and to pun.
It chanced no lady had been thrown,
No heir had cracked his collar-bone,
So pleasure laughed on every cheek,
And nought, save saddles, dreamed of pique.
And brightest of that brilliant train,
With jewelled bit, and gilded rein,
And pommel clothed in gorgeous netting,
And courser daintily curvetting,
Girt round with gallant Cavaliers,
Some deep in love, and some in years,
Half exquisites and half absurds,
All babbling of their beasts and birds,
Quite tired of trumpeting and talking,
The Baroness returned from hawking.

The Lady halted; well she might;
For Vidal was so fair,
You would have thought some god of light
Had walked to take the air;
Bare were both his delicate hands,
And the hue on his cheek was high,
As woman's when she understands
Her first fond lover's sigh;

And desolate very, and very dumb,
And rolling his eyes of blue,
And rubbing his forehead, and biting his thumb,
As lyrists and lovers do.
Like Queen Titania's darling pet,
Or Oberon's wickedest elf,
He lay beside a rivulet,
And looked beside himself;
And belles full blown, and beaux full drest,
Stood there with smirk and smile,
And many a finger, and many a jest,
Were pointed all the while.

Then Vidal came, and bent his knees
Before the Lady there,
And raised his bonnet, that the breeze
Might trifle with his hair;
And said, he was a nameless youth,
Had learned betimes to tell the truth,
Could greet a friend, and grasp a foe,
Could take a jest, and give a blow,
Had no idea of false pretences,
Had lost his father, and his senses,
Was travelling over land and sea,
Armed with guitar and gallantry;
And if her will found aught of pleasure
In trifling soul, and tinkling measure,

He prayed that she would call her own
His every thought, and every tone.

“Bonne grace, good Mary, and sweet St. John!”
That haughty dame did say;
“A goodly quarry I have won,
In this our sport to-day!
A precious page is this of mine,
To carve my meat and pour my wine,
To loose my greyhound's ringing chain,
And hold my palfrey's gaudy rein,
And tell strange tales of moody sprites,
Around the hearth, on winter nights.
Marry! a wilful look, and wild!
But we shall tame the wayward child,
And dress his roving locks demurely,
And tie his jesses on securely.”

She took from out her garment's fold
A dazzling gaud of twisted gold;
She raised him from his knee;
The diamond cross she gravely kissed,
And twined the links around his wrist
With such fine witchery,
That there he kneeled, and met her glance
In silence and a moveless trance,
And saw no sight, and heard no sound,
And knew himself more firmly bound

Than if a hundred weight of steel
Had fettered him from head to heel!

And from that moment Vidal gave
His childish fancy up,
Became her most peculiar slave,
And wore her scarf, and whipped her knave
And filled her silver cup.
She was a widow: on this earth
It seemed her only task was mirth;
She had no nerves and no sensations,
No troubling friends nor poor relations;
No gnawing grief to feel a care for,
No living soul to breathe a prayer for.
Ten years ago her lord and master
Had chanced upon a sad disaster;
One night his servants found him lying
Speechless or senseless, dead or dying,
With shivered sword and dabbled crest,
And a small poniard in his breast,
And nothing further to supply
The slightest hint of how or why.
As usual, in such horrid cases,
The men made oath, the maids made faces:
All thought it most immensely funny
The murderer should have left the money,
And showed suspicions in dumb crambo,
And buried him with fear and flambeau.

Clotilda shrieked and swooned, of course,
Grew very ill, and very hoarse,
Put on a veil, put off a rout,
Turned all her cooks and courtiers out,
And lived two years on water-gruel,
And drank no wine, and used no fuel.
At last, when all the world had seen
How very virtuous she had been,
She left her chamber, dried her tears,
Kept open house for Cavaliers,
New furnished all the cobwebbed rooms,
And burned a fortune in perfumes.
She had seen six-and-thirty springs,
And still her blood's warm wanderings
Told tales in every throbbing vein
Of youth's high hope, and passion's reign,
And dreams from which that lady's heart
Had parted, or had seemed to part.
She had no wiles from cunning France,
Too cold to sing, too tall to dance;
But yet, where'er her footsteps went.
She was the Queen of Merriment:
She called the quickest at the table,
For Courcy's song, or Comine's fable,
Bade Barons quarrel for her glove,
And talked with Squires of ladie-love,
And hawked and hunted in all weathers,
And stood six feet—including feathers.

Her suitors, men of swords and banners,
Were very guarded in their manners,
And e'en when heated by the jorum
Knew the strict limits of decorum.
Well had Clotilda learned the glance
That checks a lover's first advance;
That brow to her was given
That chills presumption in its birth,
And mars the madness of our mirth,
And wakes the reptile of the earth
From the vision he hath of Heaven.
And yet for Vidal she could find
No word or look that was not kind:
With him she walked in shine or shower,
And quite forgot the dinner hour,
And gazed upon him, till he smiled,
As doth a mother on a child.
Oh! when was dream so purely dreamed!
A mother and a child they seemed:
In warmer guise he loved her not;—
And if, beneath the stars and moon,
He lingered in some lonely spot
To play her fond and favourite tune,
And if he fed her petted mare,
And made acquaintance with her bear,
And kissed her hand whene'er she gave it,
And kneeled him down, sometimes, to crave it,

'Twas partly pride, and partly jest,
And partly 'twas a boyish whim,
And that he liked to see the rest
Look angrily on her and him.
And that—in short, he was a boy,
And doted on his last new toy.

It chanced that late, one summer's gloaming,
The Lady and the youth were roaming,
In converse close of those and these,
Beneath a long arcade of trees;
Tall trunks stood up on left and right,
Like columns in the gloom of night,
Breezeless and voiceless; and on high,
Where those eternal pillars ended,
The silent boughs so closely blended
Their mirk, unstirring majesty,
That Superstition well might run
To wander there from twelve to one,
And call strange shapes from heaven or hell
Of cowl and candle, book and bell,
And kneel as in the vaulted aisle
Of some time-honoured Gothic pile
To pay her weary worship there
Of counted beads, and pattered prayer.

Clotilda had, for once, the vapours,
And when the stars lit up their tapers,

She said that she was very weary,—
She liked the place, it was so dreary.—
The dew was down on grass and flower,
'Twas very wet—'twas very wrong—
But she must rest for half an hour,
And listen to another song.

Then many a tale did Vidal tell
Of warrior's spear, and wizard's spell;
How that Sir Brian le Bleu had been
Cup-bearer to a fairy queen;
And how that a hundred years did pass,
And left his brow as smooth as glass;
Time on his form marked no decay,
He stole not a single charm away,
He could not blight
That eye of light,
Nor turn those raven ringlets gray.

But Brian's love for a mortal maid,
Was written and read in a magic sign,
When Brian slipped on the moonlight glade,
And spilled the fairy's odorous wine;
And she dipped her fingers in the can,
And sprinkled him with seven sprinkles,
And he went from her presence a weary man,
A withering lump of rheum and wrinkles.

And how that Satan made a bond
With Armonell of Trebizond—
A bond that was written at first in tears,
And torn at last in laughter—
To be his slave for a thousand years,
And his sovereign ever after.

And oh! those years, they fleeted fast,
And a single year remained at last,
A year for crouching and for crying,
Between his frolic and his frying.

“Toil yet another toil,” quoth he,
“Or else thy prey I will not be;
Come hither, come hither, servant mine,
And call me back
The faded track
Of years nine hundred and ninety-nine!”
And Satan hied to his home again
On the wings of a blasting hurricane,
And left old Armonell to die,
And sleep in the odour of sanctity.

In mockery of the Minstrel's skill
The Lady's brow grew darker still;
She trembled as she lay,
And o'er her face, like fitful flame,
The feverish colour went and came.

And, in the pauses of the tune,
Her black eyes stared upon the moon
With an unearthly ray.

“Good Vidal,”—as she spoke she leant
So wildly o'er the instrument
That wondering Vidal started back,
For fear the strings should go to wrack,—
“Good Vidal, I have read and heard
Of many a haunted heath and dell,
Where potency of wand or word,
Or chanted rhyme, or written spell,
Hath burst, in such an hour as this,
The cerements of the rotting tomb,
And waked from woe, or torn from bliss,
The heritors of chill and gloom,
Until they walked upon the earth,
Unshrouded, in a ghastly mirth,
And frightened men with soundless cries,
And hueless cheeks, and rayless eyes.
Such power there is!—if such be thine,
Why, make to-night that sound or sign;
And while the vapoury sky looks mirk
In horror at our midnight work,
We two will sit on two green knolis,
And jest with unembodied souls,
And mock at every moody sprite
That wanders from his bed to-night.”

The boy jumped up in vast surprise,
And rubbed his forehead and his eyes,
And, quite unable to reflect,
Made answer much to this effect:
“Lady!—the saints befriend a sinner!—
Lady!—she drank too much at dinner!—
I know a rhyme, and—ghosts forsooth!—
I used to sing it in my youth;
'Twas taught me—curse my foolish vanity!—
By an old wizard—stark insanity!—
Who came from Tunis—'tis the hock!—
At a great age and—twelve o'clock!—
He wore—O Lord!—a painted girdle,
For which they burnt him on a hurdle;
He had a charm, but—what the deuce!
It wasn't of the slightest use;
There's not a single ghost that cares
For—mercy on me! how she stares!”
And then again he sate him down,
For fiercer fell Clotilda's frown,
And played, abominably ill,
And horribly against his will.

“Spirits, that walk and wail to-night,
I feel, I feel that ye are near;
There is a mist upon my sight,
There is a murmur in mine ear,

And a dark dark dread
Of the lonely dead,
Creeps through the whispering atmosphere!

“Ye hover o'er the hoary trees,
And the old oaks stand bereft and bare;
Ye hover o'er the moonlight seas,
And the tall masts rot in the poisoned air;
Ye gaze on the gate
Of earthly state,
And the ban-dog shivers in silence there.

“Come hither to me upon your cloud,
And tell me of your bliss or pain,
And let me see your shadowy shroud,
And colourless lip, and bloodless vein;
Where do ye dwell,
In heaven or hell?
And why do ye wander on earth again?

“Tell to me where and how ye died,
Fell ye in darkness, or fell ye in day,
On lorn hill-side, or roaring tide,
In gorgeous feast, or rushing fray?
By bowl or blow,
From friend or foe,
Hurried your angry souls away?

“Mute ye come, and mute ye pass,
Your tale untold, your shrift unshriven;
But ye have blighted the pale grass,
And scared the ghastly stars from heaven;
And guilt hath known
Your voiceless moan,
And felt that the blood is unforgiven!”

He paused; for silently and slow
The Lady left his side;
It seemed her blood had ceased to flow,
For her cheek was as white as the morning snow,
And the light of her eyes had died.
She gazed upon some form of fright,—
But it was not seen of Vidal's sight;
She drank some sound of hate or fear,—
But it was not heard of Vidal's ear;
“Look! look!” she said; and Vidal spoke:
“Why! zounds! it's nothing but an oak!”

“Valence!” she muttered, “I will rise;
Ay! turn not those dead orbs on mine;
Fearless to-night are these worn eyes,
And nerveless is that arm of thine.
Thrice hast thou fleeted o'er my path;
And I would hear thy dull lips say,
Is it in sorrow, or in wrath,
That thou dost haunt my lonely way?

Ay! frown not! heaven may blast me now,
In this dark hour, in this cold spot;
And then—I can but be as thou,
And hate thee still, and fear thee not!”
She strode two steps, and stretched her hand
In attitude of stern command;
The tremor of her voice and tread
Had more of passion than of dread,
The net had parted from her hair,
The locks fell down in the powerless air,
Her frame with strange convulsion rocked—
And Vidal was intensely shocked.

The Lady drew a long low sigh,
As if some voice had made reply,
Though Vidal could not catch a word
And thought it horribly absurd.
“Remember it?—avenging power!
I ask no word, I need no sign,
To teach me of that withering hour
That linked this wasted hand in thine!
He was not there!—I deemed him slain:—
And thine the guilt,—and mine the pain!
There are memorials of that day
Which time shall never blot away,
Unheeded prayer, unpardoned sin,
And smiles without, and flames within.

And broken heart, and ruined fame,
And glutted hate, and dreaded shame,
And late remorse, and dreams, and fears
And bitter and enduring tears!”

She listened there another space,
And stirred no feature of her face,
Though big drops, ere she spoke again,
Fell from her clammy brow like rain:
At last she glanced a wilder stare,
And stamped her foot, and tore her hair.
“False fiend! thou liest, thou hast lied!
He was, what thou couldst never be—
In anguish true, in danger tried—
Their friend to all—my god to me!
He loved—as thou couldst never love—
Long years—and not, till then, in guilt;
Nay! point not to the wailing grove,
I know by whom the blood was spilt,
I saw the tomb, and heard the knell,
And life to me was lorn and blighted,—
He died—and vengeance watches well!
He died—and thou wert well requited!”

Again she listened:—full five score
You might have counted duly o'er—
And then she laughed; so fierce and shrill
That laughter echoed o'er the hill,

That Vidal deemed the very ground
Did shake at its unearthly sound.
“I do not tremble! be it so!—
Or here or there! in bliss or woe!—
Yea! let it be! and we will meet,
Where never—” and at Vidal's feet
She sank, as senseless and as cold
As if her death were two days old;
And Vidal, who an hour before
Had voted it a horrid bore,
His silken sash with speed unlaced,
And bound it round her neck and waist,
And bore her to her castle-gate,
And never stopped to rest or bait,
Speeding as swiftly on his track
As if nine fiends were at his back.

Then rose from fifty furious lungs
A Babel of discordant tongues:
“Jesu! the Baroness is dead!”—
“Shouldn't her Ladyship be bled?”—
“Her fingers are as cold as stone!”—
“And look how white her lips are grown!
A dreadful thing for all who love her
'Tis ten to one she won't recover!”—
“Ten?”—“did you ever, Mrs. Anne?
Ten rogues against one honest man!”—
“How master Vidal must have fought!

It's what I never should have thought;
He seems the sickliest thing alive;”—
“They say he killed and wounded five!”—
“Is master Vidal killed and wounded?
I trust the story is unfounded!”—
“I saw him on his legs just now,”—
“What! sawed his legs off? well, I vow”—
“Peace, babbler, peace! you see you've shocked her!
Help! ho!”—“cold water for the Doctor!
Her eyes are open!”—“how they blink!
Why, Doctor, do you really think,”—
“My Lord, we never think at all;
I'll trouble you to clear the hall,
And check all tendency to riot,
And keep the Castle very quiet;
Let none but little Bertha stay;
And—try to keep the Friar away!”
Poor Vidal, who amid the rout
Had crept in cautious silence out,
Reeled to his chamber in the staggers,
And thought of home, and dreamed of daggers

Day dawned: the Baroness was able
To beam upon the breakfast table,
As well as could be well expected,
Before the guests were half collected.
“A fainting fit;—a thing of course;—
In sooth it might have ended worse;

Exceedingly obliged to Vidal;—
Pray, had the groom repaired her bridle?
She walked too late;—it was a warning;
And—who was for the chase this morning?”

Days past, and weeks: Clotilda's mien
Was gay as it before had been,
And only once or twice her glance
Fell darkly on his countenance,
And gazed into his eyes of blue,
As if she read his young heart through:
At length she mildly hinted—“Surely
Vidal was looking very poorly,—
He never talked,—had parted quite
With spirits, and with appetite;
She thought he wanted change of air;—
It was a shame to keep him there
She had remarked the change with sorrow,
And—well, he should set out to-morrow.”

The morrow came, 'twas glorious weather,
And all the household flocked together
To hold his stirrup and his rein,
And say, “Heaven speed!” with might and mam
Clotilda only said “Farewell!”
And gave her hand to kiss and clasp;
He thought it trembled, as it fell
In silence from his lip and grasp,

And yet upon her cheek and brow
There dwelt no flush of passion now;
Only the kind regret was there
Which severed friends at parting wear,
And the sad smile and glistening eye
Seemed nought to shun, and nought defy.

“Farewell!” she said, and so departed;
And Vidal from his reverie started,
And blessed his soul, and cleared his throat,
And crossed his forehead—and the moat.

END OF CANTO I.

CANTO II.

All milliners who start from bed
To gaze upon a coat of red,
Or listen to a drum,
Know very well the Paphian Queen
Was never yet at Paphos seen,
That Cupid's all a hum,
That minstrels forge confounded lies
About the Deities and skies,
That torches all go out sometimes,
That flowers all fade except in rhymes,
That maids are seldom shot with arrows,
And coaches never drawn by sparrows.

And yet, fair cousin, do not deem
That all is false which poets tell,
Of Passion's first and dearest dream,
Of haunted spot, and silent spell,
Of long low musing, such as suits
The terrace on your own dark hill,
Of whispers which are sweet as lutes,
And silence which is sweeter still;
Believe, believe,—for May shall pass,
And summer sun and winter shower

Shall dim the freshness of the grass,
And mar the fragrance of the flower,—
Believe it all, whate'er you hear
Of plighted vow, and treasured token,
And hues which only once appear,
And words which only once are spoken,
And prayers whose natural voice is song,
And schemes that die in wild endeavour,
And tears so pleasant, you will long
To weep such pleasant tears for ever:
Believe it all, believe it all!
Oh! Virtue's frown is all divine;
And Folly hides his happy thrall
In sneers as cold and false as mine;
And Reason prates of wrong and right,
And marvels hearts can break or bleed,
And flings on all that's warm and bright
The winter of his icy creed;
But when the soul has ceased to glow,
And years and cares are coming fast,
There's nothing like young love! no, no!
There's nothing like young love at last!

The Convent of St. Ursula
Has been in a marvellous fright to-day;
The nuns are all in a terrible pother,
Scolding and screaming at one another;
Two or three pale, and two or three red;

Two or three frightened to death in bed;
Two or three waging a wordy war
With the wide-eared saints of the calendar.
Beads and lies have both been told,
Tempers are hot, and dishes are cold;
Celandine rends her last new veil,
Leonore babbles of horns and tail;
Celandine proses of songs and slips,
Violette blushes and bites her lips:
Oh! what is the matter, the matter to-day,
With the Convent of St. Ursula?

But the Abbess has made the chiefest din,
And cried the loudest cry;
She has pinned her cap with a crooked pin,
And talked of Satan and of sin,
And set her coif awry;
And she can never quiet be;
But ever since the matins,
In gallery and scullery,
And kitchen and refectory,
She tramps it in her pattens;
Oh! what is the matter, the matter to-day,
With the Abbess of St. Ursula?

Thrice in the silence of eventime
A desperate foot has dared to climb
Over the Convent gate;

Thrice a venturous voice and lute
Have dared to wake their amorous suit,
Among the Convent flowers and fruit,
Abominably late;
And thrice, the beldames know it well,
From out the lattice of her cell,
To listen to that murmured measure
Of life, and love, and hope, and pleasure,
With throbbing heart and eyelid wet,
Hath leaned the novice Violette;
And oh! you may tell from her mournful gaze,
Her vision hath been of those dear days,
When happily o'er the quiet lawn,
Bright with the dew's most heavenly sprinkles,
She scared the pheasant, and chased the fawn,
Till a smile came o'er her father's wrinkles;
Or stood beside that water fair,
Where moonlight slept with a ray so tender,
That every star which glistened there,
Glistened, she thought, with a double splendour;
And oh! she loved the ripples' play,
As to her feet the truant rovers
Wandered and went with a laugh away,
Kissing but once, like wayward lovers.
And oh! she loved the night-wind's moan,
And the dreary watch-dog's lonely yelling,
And the sentinel's unchanging tone,
And the chapel chime so sadly knelling,

And the echoes from the Castle hall
Of circling song and noisy gladness,
And, in some silent interval,
The nightingale's deep voice of sadness.
Alas! there comes a winter bleak
On the lightest joy, and the loveliest flower;
And the smiles have faded on Violette's cheek,
And the roses have withered in Violette's bower;
But now by the beautiful turf and tide
Poor Violette's heart in silence lingers,
And the thrilling tears of memory glide
Thro' the trembling veil and the quivering fingers.
Yet not for these—for these alone—
That innocent heart beats high to-day;
And not for these the stifled moan
Is breathed in such thick passionate tone,
That—not the lips appear to pray,—
But you may deem those murmurs start
Forth from the life-strings of the heart,
So wild and strange is that long sigh,
So full of bliss and agony!

She thinks of him, the lovely boy,
Sweet Vidal, with his face of joy,
The careless mate of all the glee
That shone upon her infancy,
The baby-lover, who had been
The sceptred King, where she was Queen,

On Childhood's dream-encircled strand,
The undisputed Fairy-land!
She thinks of him, she thinks of him,
The lord of every wicked whim,
Who dared Sir Prinsamour to battle,
And drove away De Clifford's cattle,
And sang an Ave at the feast,
And made wry faces at the Priest,
And ducked the Duchess in the sea,
And tore Sir Roland's pedigree.

She thinks of him,—the forehead fair,
The ruddy lip, and glossy hair,—
The mountains, where they roved together
In life's most bright and witching weather,—
The wreck they watched upon the coast,—
The ruin where they saw the ghost,—
The fairy tale he loved to tell,—
The serenade he sang so well;
And then she turns and sees again
The naked wall, and grated pane,
And frequent winks and frequent frowns,
And 'broidered books, and 'broidered gowns,
And plaster saints and plaster patrons,
And three impracticable matrons.

She was a very pretty nun:
Sad, delicate, and five feet one;

Her face was oval, and her eye
Looked like the heaven in Italy,
Serenely blue, and softly bright,
Made up of languish and of light!
And her neck, except where the locks of brown,
Like a sweet summer mist, fell droopingly down,
Was as chill and as white as the snow, ere the earth
Has sullied the hue of its heavenly birth;
And through the blue veins you might see
The pure blood wander silently,
Like noiseless eddies, that far below
In the glistening depths of a calm lake flow:
Her cold hands on her bosom lay;
And her ivory crucifix, cold as they,
Was clasped in a fearful and fond caress,
As if she shrank from its holiness,
And felt that hers was the only guilt
For which no healing blood was spilt:
And tears were bursting all the while;
Yet now and then a vacant smile
Over her lips would come and go,—
A very mockery of woe,—
A brief, wan smile,—a piteous token
Of a warm love crushed, and a young heart broken!

“Marry come up!” said Celandine,
Whose nose was ruby red,—

“From venomous cates and wicked wine
A deadly sin is bred.
Darkness and anti-phlogistic diet,
These will keep the pulses quiet;
Silence and solitude, bread and water,—
So must we cure our erring daughter!”
I have dined at an Alderman's board,
I have drunk with a German lord,
But richer was Celandine's own paté
Than Sir William's soup on Christmas day,
And sweeter the flavour of Celandine's flask
Than the loveliest cup from a Rhenish cask!

“Saints keep us!” said old Winifrede,
“Saints keep and cure us all!
And let us hie to our book and bead,
Or sure the skies will fall!
Is she a Heathen, or is she a Hindoo,
To talk with a silly boy out of the window?
Was ever such profaneness seen?
Pert minx!—and only just sixteen!”
I have talked with a fop who has fought twelve duels,
Six for an heiress, and six for her jewels;
I have prosed with a reckless bard, who rehearses
Every day a thousand verses;
But oh! more marvellous twenty times
Than the bully's lies, or the blockhead's rhymes,

Were the scurrilous tales, which Scandal told
Of Winifrede's loves in the days of old!

The Abbess lifted up her eye,
And laid her rosary down,
And sighed a melancholy sigh,
And frowned an angry frown.
“There is a cell in the dark cold ground,
Where sinful passions wither:
Vapoury dews lie damp around,
And merriment of sight or sound
Can work no passage thither:
Other scene is there, I trow,
Than suits a love-sick maiden's vow;
For a death-watch makes a weary tune,
And a glimmering lamp is a joyiess moon,
And a couch of stone is a dismal rest,
And an aching heart is a bitter guest!
Maiden of the bosom light,
There shall thy dwelling be to-night;
Mourn and meditate, fast and pray,
And drive the evil one away.
Axe and cord were fitter doom,
Desolate grave and mouldering tomb;
But the merciful faith, that speaks the sentence,
Joys in the dawn of a soul's repentance,
And the eyes may shed sweet tears for them,
Whom the hands chastise, and the lips condemn!’

I have set my foot on the hallowed spot
Where the dungeon of trampled France is not;
I have heard men talk of Mr. Peel;
I have seen men walk on the Brixton wheel;
And 'twere better to feed on frogs and fears,
Guarded by griefs and grenadiers,
And 'twere better to tread all day and night,
With a rogue on the left, and a rogue on the right,
Than lend our persons or our purses
To that old lady's tender mercies!

“Ay! work your will!” the young girl said;
And as she spoke she raised her head,
And for a moment turned aside
To check the tear she could not hide;—
“Ay! work your will!—I know you all,
Your holy aims and pious arts.
And how you love to fling a pall
On fading joys, and blighted hearts;
And if these quivering lips could tell
The story of our bliss and woe,
And how we loved—oh! loved, as well
As ever mortals loved below,—
And how in purity and truth
The flower of early joy was nurst,
Till sadness nipped its blushing youth,
And holy mummery called it curst,—

You would but watch my sobs and sighs
With shaking head, and silent sneers,
And deck with smiles those soulless eyes,
When mine should swell with bitter tears!
But work your will! Oh! life and limb
May wither in that house of dread,
Where horrid shapes and shadows dim
Walk nightly round the slumberer's head;
The sight may sink, the tongue may fail,
The shuddering spirit long for day,
And fear may make these features pale,
And turn these boasted ringlets gray;
But not for this, oh! not for this,
The heart will lose its dream of gladness;
And the fond thought of that last kiss
Will live in torture—yea! in madness!
And look! I will not fear or feel
The all your hate may dare or do;
And, if I ever pray and kneel,
I will not kneel and pray to you!”

If you had seen that tender cheek,
Those eyes of melting blue,
You would not have thought in a thing so weak
Such a fiery spirit grew.
But the trees which summer's breezes shake
Are shivered in winter's gale;

And a meek girl's heart will bear to break,
When a proud man's truth would fail.

Never a word she uttered more;
They have led her down the stair,
And left her on the dungeon floor
To find repentance there;
And nought have they set beside her bed,
Within that chamber dull,
But a lonely lamp, and a loaf of bread,
A rosary and skull.
The breast is bold that grows not cold,
With a strong convulsive twinge,
As the slow door creeps to its sullen hold
Upon its mouldering hinge.
That door was made by the cunning hand
Of an artist from a foreign land;
Human skill and heavenly thunder
Shall not win its wards asunder.
The chain is fixed, and the bolt is fast,
And the kind old Abbess lingers last,
To mutter a prayer on her bended knee,
And clasp to her girdle the iron key.

But then, oh! then began to run
Horrible whispers from nun to nun:
“Sister Amelia,”—“Sister Anne,”—
“Do tell us how it all began;”

“The youth was a handsome youth, that's certain,
For Bertha peeped from behind the curtain:”—
“As sure as I have human eyes,
It was the Devil in disguise;
His hair hanging down like threads of wire,
And his mouth breathing smoke, like a haystack on fire.
And the ground beneath his footstep rocking!”—
“Lord! Isabel! how very shocking!”
“Poor Violette! she was so merry!
I'm very sorry for her!—very!”
“Well! it was worth a silver tester,
To see how she frowned when the Abbess blessed her;”—
“Was Father Anselm there to shrive?
For I'm sure she'll never come out alive!”—
“Dear Elgitha, don't frighten us so!”—
“It's just a hundred years ago
Since Father Peter was put in the cell
For forgetting to ring the vesper bell;
Let us keep ourselves from mortal sin!
He went not out as he went in!”—
“No! and he lives there still, they say,
In his cloak of black, and his cowl of gray,
Weeping, and wailing, and walking about,
With an endless grief, and an endless gout,
And wiping his eyes with a kerchief of lawn,
And ringing his bell from dusk to dawn!”—
“Let us pray to be saved from love and spectres!”—
“From the haunted cell!”—“and the Abbess's lectures!”

The garish sun has gone away,
And taken with him the toils of day;
Foul ambition's hollow schemes,
Busy labour's golden dreams,
Angry strife, and cold debate,
Plodding care, and plotting hate.
But in the nunnery sleep is fled
From many a vigilant hand and head;
A watch is set of friars tall,
Jerome and Joseph and Peter and Paul;
And the chattering girls are all locked up;
And the wrinkled old Abbess is gone to sup
On mushrooms and sweet muscadel,
In the fallen one's deserted cell.

And now 'tis love's most lovely hour,
And silence sits on earth and sky,
And moonlight flings on turf and tower
A spell of deeper witchery;
And in the stillness and the shade
All things and colours seem to fade;
And the garden queen, the blushing rose,
Has bowed her head in a soft repose;
And weary Zephyr has gone to rest
In the flowery grove he loves the best.
Nothing is heard but the long, long snore,
Solemn and sad, of the watchmen four,

And the voice of the rivulet rippling by,
And the nightingale's evening melody,
And the drowsy wing of the sleepless bat,
And the mew of the gardener's tortoise-shell cat

Dear cousin! a harp like yours has power
Over the soul in every hour;
And after breakfast, when Sir G.
Has been discussing news and tea,
And eulogised his coals and logs,
And told the breeding of his dogs,
And hurled anathemas of pith
Against the sect of Adam Smith,
And handed o'er to endless shame
The voters for the sale of game,
'Tis sweet to fly from him and vapours,
And those interminable papers,
And waste an idle hour or two
With dear Rossini, and with you.

But those sweet sounds are doubly sweet
In the still nights of June,
When song and silence seem to meet
Beneath the quiet moon;
When not a single leaf is stirred
By playful breeze or joyous bird,
And Echo shrinks, as if afraid
Of the faint murmur she has made.

Oh then the Spirit of music roves
With a delicate step through the myrtle groves,
And still, wherever he flits, he flings
A thousand charms from his purple wings.
And where is that discourteous wight,
Who would not linger through the night,
Listening ever, lone and mute,
To the murmur of his mistress' lute,
And courting those bright phantasies,
Which haunt the dreams of waking eyes?

He came that night, the Troubadour,
While the four fat friars slept secure,
And gazed on the lamp that sweetly glistened,
Where he thought his mistress listened;
Low and clear the silver note
On the thrilled air seemed to float;
Such might be an angel's moan,
Half a whisper, half a tone.

“So glad a life was never, love,
As that which childhood leads,
Before it learns to sever, love,
The roses from the weeds;
When to be very duteous, love,
Is all it has to do;
And every flower is beauteous, love,
And every folly true.

“And you can still remember, love,
The buds that decked our play,
Though Destiny's December, love,
Has whirled those buds away:
And you can smile through tears, love,
And feel a joy in pain,
To think upon those years, love,
You may not see again.

“When we mimicked the Friar's howls, love,
Cared nothing for his creeds,
Made bonnets of his cowls, love,
And bracelets of his beads;
And gray-beards looked not awful, love,
And grandames made no din,
And vows were not unlawful, love,
And kisses were no sin.

“And do you never dream, love,
Of that enchanted well,
Where under the moon-beam, love,
The Fairies wove their spell?
How oft we saw them greeting, love,
Beneath the blasted tree,
And heard their pale feet beating, love,
To their own minstrelsy!

“And do you never think, love,
Of the shallop, and the wave,
And the willow on the brink, love,
Over the poacher's grave?
Where always in the dark, love,
We heard a heavy sigh,
And the dogs were wont to bark, love,
Whenever they went by?

“Then gaily shone the heaven, love,
On life's untroubled sea,
And Vidal's heart was given, love,
In happiness to thee;
The sea is all benighted, love,
The heaven has ceased to shine;
The heart is seared and blighted, love,
But still the heart is thine!”

He paused and looked; he paused and sighed;
None appeared, and none replied:
All was still but the waters' wail,
And the tremulous voice of the nightingale,
And the insects buzzing among the briars,
And the nasal note of the four fat friars.

100

“Oh fly with me! 'tis Passion's hour;
The world is gone to sleep;
And nothing wakes in brake or bower,
But those who love and weep:
This is the golden time and weather,
When songs and sighs go out together,
And minstrels pledge the rosy wine
To lutes like this, and lips like thine!

“Oh fly with me! my courser's flight
Is like the rushing breeze,
And the kind moon has said ‘Good night!
And sunk behind the trees:
The lover's voice—the loved one's ear—
There's nothing else to speak and hear;
And we will say, as on we glide,
That nothing lives on earth beside!

“Oh fly with me! and we will wing
Our white skiff o'er the waves,
And hear the Tritons revelling,
Among their coral caves;
The envious Mermaid, when we pass,
Shall cease her song, and drop her glass;
For it will break her very heart,
To see how fair and dear thou art.

101

“Oh fly with me! and we will dwell
Far over the green seas,
Where sadness rings no parting knell
For moments such as these!
Where Italy's unclouded skies
Look brightly down on brighter eyes,
Or where the wave-wed City smiles,
Enthroned upon her hundred isles.

“Oh fly with me! by these sweet strings
Swept o'er by Passion's fingers,
By all the rocks, and vales, and springs
Where Memory lives and lingers,
By all the tongue can never tell,
By all the heart has told so well,
By all that has been or may be,
And by Love's self—Oh fly with me!”

He paused again—no sight or sound!
The still air rested all around;
He looked to the tower, and he looked to the tree,
Night was as still as night could be;
Something he muttered of Prelate and Pope,
And took from his mantle a silken rope;
Love dares much, and Love climbs well!
He stands by the Abbess in Violette's cell.

102

He put on a mask, and he put out the light;
The Abbess was dressed in a veil of white;
Not a look he gave, not a word he said;
The pages are ready, the blanket is spread;
He has clasped his arm her waist about,
And lifted the screaming Abbess out:
“My horse is fleet, and my hand is true,
And my Squire has a bow of deadly yew;
Away, and away, over mountain and moor!
Good luck to the love of the gay Troubadour!”

“What! rode away with the Abbess behind!
Lord! sister! is the Devil blind?”—
“Full fourscore winters!”—“Fast and pray!
For the powers of darkness fight to-day!”—
“I shan't get over the shock for a week!”—
“Did any one hear our Mother shriek?”—
“Do shut your mouth!”—“do shut the cell!”—
“What a villanous, odious, sulphury smell!”—
“Has the Evil One taken the Mass-book too?”—
“Ah me! what will poor little Violette do?
She has but one loaf since seven o'clock;
And no one can open that horrible lock;
And Satan will grin with a fiendish glee,
When he finds the Abbess has kept the key!”—
“How shall we manage to sleep to-night?”—
“I wouldn't for worlds put out my light!”—

103

“I'm sure I shall die if I hear but a mole stir!”—
“I'll clap St. Ursula under my bolster!”

But oh! the pranks that Vidal played,
When he found what a bargain his blindness had made!
Wilful and wild,—half in fun, half on fire,
He stared at the Abbess, and stormed at the Squire!
Consigned to perdition all silly romancers,
Asked twenty strange questions, and stayed for no answers,
Raving, and roaring, and laughing by fits,
And driving the old woman out of her wits.

There was a jousting at Chichester;
It had made in the country a mighty stir,
And all that was brave, and all that was fair,
And all that was neither, came trooping there;
Scarfs and scars, and frays and frowns,
And flowery speeches, and flowery crowns.
A hundred knights set spear in rest
For the lady they deemed the loveliest,
And Vidal broke a lance that day
For the Abbess of St. Ursula.

There was a feast at Arundel;
The town-clerk tolled a ponderous bell,
And nothing was there but row and rout,
And toil to get in, and toil to get out,

104

And Sheriffs fatter than their venison,
And belles that never stayed for benison.
The red red wine was mantling there
To the health of the fairest of the fair,
And Vidal drained the cup that day
To the Abbess of St. Ursula.

There was a wedding done at Bramber;
The town was full of myrrh and amber;
And the boors were roasting valorous beeves,
And the boys were gathering myrtle leaves,
And the bride was choosing her finest flounces,
And the bridegroom was scattering coin by ounces;
And every stripling danced on the green
With the girl he had made his idol queen,
And Vidal led the dance that day
With the Abbess of St. Ursula.

Three days had passed when the Abbess came back;
Her voice was out of tune,
And her new white veil was gone to wrack,
And so were her sandal shoon.
No word she said; they put her to bed,
With a pain in her heels, and a pain in her head,
And she talked in her delirious fever
Of a high-trotting horse, and a black deceiver;
Of music and merriment, love and lances,
Bridles and blasphemy, dishes and dances.

105

They went with speed to the dungeon door;
The air was chill and damp;
And the pale girl lay on the marble floor,
Beside the dying lamp.
They kissed her lips, they called her name,
No kiss returned, no answer came;
Motionless, lifeless, there she lay,
Like a statue rent from its base away!
They said by famine she had died;
Yet the bread untasted lay beside;
And her cheek was as full, and fresh, and fair,
As it had been when warmth was there,
And her eyes were unclosed, and their glassy rays
Were fixed in a desolate, dreamy gaze,
As if before their orbs had gone
Some sight they could not close upon;
And her bright brown locks all gray were grown;
And her hands were clenched, and cold as stone;
And the veins upon her neck and brow—
But she was dead!—what boots it how?

In holy ground she was not laid;
For she had died in sin,
And good St. Ursula forbade
That such should enter in;
But in a calm and cold retreat
They made her place of rest,

106

And laid her in her winding-sheet,
And left her there unblessed;
And set a small stone at her head,
Under a spreading tree;
“Orate”—that was all it said—
“Orate hic pro me!”

And Vidal came at night, alone,
And tore his shining hair,
And laid him down beside the stone,
And wept till day-break there.

“Fare thee well, fare thee well,
Most beautiful of earthly things!
I will not bid thy spirit stay,
Nor link to earth those glittering wings,
That burst like light away!
I know that thou art gone to dwell
In the sunny home of the fresh day-beam,
Before decay's unpitying tread
Hath crept upon the dearest dream
That ever came and fled;
Fare thee well, fare thee well;
And go thy way, all pure and fair,
Into the starry firmament;
And wander there with the spirits of air,
As bright and innocent!

107

“Fare thee well, fare thee well!
Strange feet will be upon thy clay,
And never stop to sigh or sorrow;
Yet many wept for thee to-day,
And one will weep to-morrow:
Alas! that melancholy knell
Shall often wake my wondering ear,
And thou shalt greet me, for a while,
Too beautiful to make me fear,
Too sad to let me smile!
Fare thee well, fare thee well!
I know that heaven for thee is won;
And yet I feel I would resign
Whole ages of my life, for one—
One little hour, of thine!

“Fare thee well, fare thee well!
See, I have been to the sweetest bowers,
And culled from garden and from heath
The tenderest of all tender flowers,
And blended in my wreath
The violet and the blue harebell,
And one frail rose in its earliest bloom;
Alas! I meant it for thy hair,
And now I fling it on thy tomb,
To weep and wither there!
Fare ye well, fare ye well!

108

Sleep, sleep, my love, in fragrant shade,
Droop, droop to-night, thou blushing token;
A fairer flower shall never fade,
Nor a fonder heart be broken!”

END OF CANTO II

109

CANTO III.
[_]

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;

110

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.

At that late hour a little boat
Came dancing down the wave;
There were none but the Moon to see it float;
And she, so very grave,
Looked down upon the quiet spot
As if she heard and heeded not
The eloquent vows which passion drew
From lips of beauty's tenderest hue,
And saw without the least surprise
The glances of the youthful eyes,
Which, in the warm and perilous weather,
Were gazing by night on the stream together.
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]

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

111

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,

112

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.

113

“If that bright glance did gleam on me,
How scarred and scorched my soul would be!
For even as the golden sun”—
“My Lord of Courcy, pray have done!”—
“I would I were a little bird,
That I might evermore be heard
Discoursing love, when morning's air”—
“Bonne grace, Sir Knight, I would you were!”—
“Mort de ma vie! the sea is deep,
And Dover cliffs are very steep,
And if I spring into the main,”—
“Sir Knight, you'll scarce spring out again!”
“This breast of mine is all a book;
And if her beauteous eyes would look
Upon the pale transparent leaves,
And mark how all the volume grieves,”—
“Sweet Count, who cares what tales it tells?
The title's all your mistress spells.”—
“My faithful shield, my faithful heart!
Oh! both are pierced with many a dart;
And, Lady, both, through flood and flame,
Bear uneffaced thy beauteous name;
And both are stainless as a lake,”—
“And both are very hard to break!”

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

114

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:

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;

116

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:

117

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;

118

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!

119

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,

120

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:

121

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,

122

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.

But while the toy was vainly tried,
The ugly Baron's handsome bride
Had sate apart from that rude game
And listened to the sighs of flame,
Which followed her from night to morning,
In spite of frowning and of scorning.
Bred up from youth with nought before her
But humble slave and fond adorer,
Ill could that haughty Lady brook
A bantering phrase or brazen look;
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]

123

Day passed, and Night came hurrying down
With her heaviest step, and her darkest frown;
Not witchingly mild, as when she hushes
The first warm thrill of woman's blushes,
Or mellows the eloquent murmur made
By some mad minstrel's serenade;
But robed in the clouds her anger flings
O'er the murderer's midnight wanderings,
The stealthy step, and the naked knife,
The sudden blow, and the parting life!—
On the snow that was sleeping its frozen sleep
Round cabin and castle, white and deep,
The love-stricken boy might have wandered far
Ere he found for his sonnet a single star;
And over the copse, and over the dell,
The mantle of mist so drearily fell,
That the fondest and bravest could hardly know
The smile of his queen from the sneer of his foe.
In the lonely cot on the lorn hill-side
The serf grew pale as he looked on his bride;
And oft, as the Baron's courtly throng
Were loud in the revel of wine and song,
The blast at the gate made such a din
As changed to horror the mirth within! [OMITTED]

124

THE LEGEND OF THE HAUNTED TREE.

“Deep is the bliss of the belted knight,
When he kisses at dawn the silken glove,
And goes, in his glittering armour dight,
To shiver a lance for his lady-love!

“Lightly he couches the beaming spear;
His mistress sits with her maidens by,
Watching the speed of his swift career,
With a whispered prayer and a murmured sigh.

“Far from me is the gazing throng,
The blazoned shield, and the nodding plume;
Nothing is mine but a worthless song,
A joyless life, and a nameless tomb.’

“Nay, dearest Wilfrid, lay like this,
On such an eve, is much amiss:
Our mirth beneath the new May moon
Should echoed be by livelier tune.

125

What need to thee of mail and crest,
Of foot in stirrup, spear in rest?
Over far mountains and deep seas,
Earth hath no fairer fields than these;
And who, in Beauty's gaudiest bowers,
Can love thee with more love than ours?”
The Minstrel turned with a moody look
From that sweet scene of guiltless glee;
From the old who talked beside the brook,
And the young who danced beneath the tree.
Coldly he shrank from the gentle maid,
From the chiding look and the pleading tone;
And he passed from the old elm's hoary shade,
And followed the forest path alone.
One little sigh, one pettish glance,—
And the girl comes back to her playmates now,
And takes her place in the merry dance,
With a slower step, and a sadder brow.
“My soul is sick,” saith the wayward boy,
“Of the peasant's grief, and the peasant's joy.
I cannot breathe on from day to day,
Like the insects, which our wise men say
In the crevice of the cold rock dwell,
Till their shape is the shape of their dungeon's cell,
In the dull repose of our changeless life,
I long for passion, I long for strife,

126

As in the calm the mariner sighs
For rushing waves and groaning skies.
Oh for the lists, the lists of fame!
Oh for the herald's glad acclaim!
For floating pennon, and prancing steed,
And Beauty's wonder at Manhood's deed!”
Beneath an ancient oak he lay;
More years than man can count, they say,
On the verge of the dim and solemn wood,
Through sunshine and storm, that oak had stood.
Yet were it hard to trace a sign
On trunk or bough of that oak's decline:
Many a loving, laughing sprite,
Tended the branches by day and by night,
Fettered the winds that would invade
The quiet of its sacred shade,
And drove in a serried phalanx back
The red-eyed lightning's fierce attack:
So the leaves of its age were as fresh and as green
As the leaves of its early youth had been.
Fretful brain and turbid breast
Under its canopy ill would rest;
For she that ruled the revels therein
Loved not the taint of human sin:
Moody brow with an evil eye
Would the Queen of the Fairy people spy;

127

Sullen tone with an angry ear
Would the Queen of the Fairy people hear.
Oft would she mock the worldling's care
E'en in the grant of his unwise prayer,
Scattering wealth that was not gain,
Lavishing joy that turned to pain.
Pure of thought should the mortal be
That would sleep beneath the Haunted Tree.
That night the Minstrel laid him down
Ere his brow relaxed its peevish frown;
And slumber had bound his eyelids fast,
Ere the evil wish from his soul had passed.
A song on the sleeper's ear descended,
A song it was pain to hear, and pleasure,
So strangely wrath and love were blended
In cvery note of the mystic measure.

“I know thee, child of earth;
The morning of thy birth,
In through the lattice did my chariot glide;
I saw thy father weep
Over thy first wild sleep,
I rocked thy cradle when thy mother died.

“And I have seen thee gaze
Upon these birks and braes,
Which are my kingdoms, with irreverent scorn;

128

And heard thee pour reproof
Upon the vine-clad roof,
Beneath whose peaceful shelter thou wert born.

“I bind thee in the snare
Of thine unholy prayer;
I seal thy forehead with a viewless seal:
I give into thine hand
The buckler and the brand,
And clasp the golden spur upon thy heel.

“When thou hast made thee wise
In the sad lore of sighs,
When the world's visions fail thee and forsake,
Return, return to me,
And to my haunted tree;—
The charm hath bound thee now; Sir Knight, awake!”

Sir Isumbras, in doubt and dread,
From his feverish sleep awoke,
And started up from his grassy bed
Under the ancient oak.
And he called the page who held his spear,
And, “Tell me, boy,” quoth he,
“How long have I been slumbering here,
Beneath the greenwood tree?”—

129

“Ere thou didst sleep, I chanced to throw
A stone into the rill;
And the ripple that disturbed its flow
Is on its surface still.
Ere thou didst sleep, thou bad'st me sing
King Arthur's favourite lay;
And the first echo of the string
Has hardly died away.”
“How strange is sleep!” the young Knight said,
As he clasped the helm upon his head,
And, mounting again his courser black,
To his gloomy tower rode slowly back:
“How strange is sleep! when his dark spell lies
On the drowsy lids of human eyes,
The years of a life will float along
In the compass of a page's song.
Methought I lived in a pleasant vale,
The haunt of the lark and the nightingale.
Where the summer rose had a brighter hue,
And the noon-day sky a clearer blue,
And the spirit of man in age and youth
A fonder love, and a firmer truth.
And I lived on, a fair-haired boy,
In that sweet vale of tranquil joy;
Until at last my vain caprice
Grew weary of its bliss and peace.

130

And one there was, most dear and fair
Of all that smiled around me there,
A gentle maid, with a cloudless face,
And a form so full of fairy grace,
Who, when I turned with scornful spleen
From the feast in the bower, or the dance on the green.
Would humour all my wayward will,
And love me, and forgive me still.
Even now, methinks, her smile of light
Is there before me, mild and bright;
And I hear her voice of fond reproof
Between the beats of my palfrey's hoof.
'Tis idle all: but I could weep;—
Alas!” said the Knight, “how strange is sleep!”
He struck with his spear the brazen plate
That gleamed before the castle gate;
The torch threw high its waves of flame
As forth the watchful menials came;
They lighted the way to the banquet hall,
They hung the shield upon the wall,
They spread the board, and they filled the bowl,
And the phantoms passed from his troubled soul.
For all the ailments which infest
A solitary Briton's breast,
The peccant humours which defile
The thoughts in this fog-haunted isle,

131

Whatever name or style they bear—
Reflection, study, nerves, or care,
There's nought of such Lethean power
As dinner at the dinner-hour.
Sefton! the Premier, o'er thy plate,
Thinks little of last night's debate;
Cowan! the merchant, in thy hall,
Grows careless what may rise or fall;
The wit who feeds can puff away
His unsold tale, his unheard play;
And Mr. Wellesley Pole forgets,
At eight o'clock, his duns and debts.
The Knight approved the roasted boar,
And mused upon his dream no more:
The Knight enjoyed the bright champagne,
And deemed himself himself again.
Sir Isumbras was ever found
Where blows were struck for glory;
There sate not at the Table Round
A knight more famed in story:
The King on his throne would turn about
To see his courser prancing;
And when Sir Launcelot had gout
The Queen would praise his dancing;
He quite wore out his father's spurs
Performing valour's duties,

132

Destroying mighty sorcerers,
Avenging injured beauties,
And crossing many a trackless sand,
And rescuing people's daughters
From dragons that infest the land,
And whales that walk the waters.
He throttled lions by the score,
And giants by the dozen;
And, for his skill in lettered lore,
They called him “Merlin's Cousin.”
A troop of steeds with bit and rein
Stood ready in his stable;
An ox was every morning slain
And roasted for his table:
And he had friends, all brave and tall,
And crowned with praise and laurel,
Who kindly feasted in his hall,
And jousted in his quarrel;
And minstrels came and sang his fame
In very rugged verses;
And they were paid with wine, and game,
And rings, and cups, and purses.
And he loved a Lady of high degree,
Faith's fortress, Beauty's flower;
A countess for her maid had she,
And a kingdom for her dower;

133

And a brow whose frowns were vastly grand,
And an eye of sunlit brightness,
And a swan-like neck, and an arm and hand
Of most bewitching whiteness;
And a voice of music, whose sweet tones
Could most divinely prattle
Of battered casques, and broken bones,
And all the bliss of battle.
He wore her scarf in many a fray,
He trained her hawks and ponies,
And filled her kitchen every day
With leverets and conies;
He loved, and he was loved again:—
I won't waste time in proving,
There is no pleasure like the pain
Of being loved, and loving.
Dame Fortune is a fickle gipsy,
And always blind, and often tipsy;
Sometimes, for years and years together,
She'll bless you with the sunniest weather,
Bestowing honour, pudding, pence,
You can't imagine why or whence;—
Then in a moment—Presto, pass!—
Your joys are withered like the grass;
You find your constitution vanish,
Almost as quickly as the Spanish;

134

The murrain spoils your flocks and fleeces;
The dry-rot pulls your house to pieces;
Your garden raises only weeds;
Your agent steals your title-deeds;
Your banker's failure stuns the city;
Your father's will makes Sugden witty;
Your daughter, in her beauty's bloom,
Goes off to Gretna with the groom;
And you, good man, are left alone,
To battle with the gout and stone.
Ere long, Sir Isumbras began
To be a sad and thoughtful man:
They said the glance of an evil eye
Had been on the Knight's prosperity:
Less swift on the quarry his falcon went,
Less true was his hound on the wild deer's scent,
And thrice in the list he came to the earth
By the luckless chance of a broken girth.
And Poverty soon in her rage was seen
At the board where Plenty erst had been;
And the guests smiled not as they smiled before,
And the song of the minstrel was heard no more;
And a base ingrate, who was his foe,
Because, a little month ago,
He had cut him down, with friendly ardour,
From a rusty hook in an ogre's larder,

135

Invented an atrocious fable,
And ruined him quite at the royal table:
And she at last, the worshipped one,
For whom his valorous deeds were done,
The star of all his soul's reflections,
The rose of all his heart's affections,
Who had heard his vows, and worn his jewels,
And made him fight so many duels,—
She too, when Fate's relentless wheel
Deprived him of the Privy Seal,
Bestowed her smiles upon another,
And gave his letters to her mother.
'Tis the last drop, as all men know,
That makes the bucket overflow,
And the last parcel of the pack
That bends in two the camel's back.
Fortune and fame—he had seen them depart,
With a silent pride of a valiant heart:
Traitorous friends—he had passed them by,
With a haughty brow and a stifled sigh.
Boundless and black might roll the sea,
O'er which the course of his bark must be;
But he saw, through the storms that frowned above,
One guiding light, and the light was Love.
Now all was dark; the doom was spoken!
His wealth all spent, and his heart half-broken;

136

Poor youth! he had no earthly hope,
Except in laudanum, or a rope.
If e'er you happened, by a twist
Of Destiny's provoking wrist,
To find yourself one morning hurled
From all you had in all the world,—
Seeing your pretty limes and beeches
Supply the auction-mart with speeches.—
By base ingratitude disgusted
In him you most esteemed and trusted,
And cut, without the slightest reason,
By her who was so kind last season,—
You know how often meditation
Assures you, for your consolation,
That, if you had but been contented
To rent the house your father rented,
If, in Sir Paul you'd been inclined to
Suspect what no one else was blind to,
If, for that false girl, you had chosen
Either her sister, or her cousin,
If anything you had been doing
But just the very thing you're rueing,
You might have lived your day in clover,
Gay, rich, prized friend, and favoured lover,
Thus was it with my Knight of knights;
While vanished all his vain delights,

137

The thought of being dupe and ass
Most galled the sick Sir Isumbras.
He ordered out his horse, and tried,
As the leech advised, a gentle ride;
A pleasant path he took,
Where the turf, all bright with the April showers,
Was spangled with a thousand flowers,
Beside a murmuring brook.
Never before had he ridden that way;
And now, on a sunny first of May,
He chose the turning, you may guess,
Not for the laughing loveliness
Of turf, or flower, or stream; but only
Because it looked extremely lonely.
Yet but that Megrim hovering here
Had dimmed the eye and dulled the ear,
Jocund and joyous all around
Were every sight and every sound.
The ancient forest, whose calm rest
No axe did ever yet molest,
Stretched far upon the right;
Here, deepening into trackless shades,
There, opening long and verdant glades,
Unto the cheerful light:
Wide on the left, whene'er the screen
Of hedgerows left a space between

138

To stand and gaze awhile,
O'er varied scenes the eye might rove,
Orchard and garden, mead and grove,
Spread out for many a mile.
Around, in all the joy of spring,
The sinless birds were carolling;
Low hummed the studious bees;
And softly, sadly, rose and fell
The echo of the ocean swell,
In the capricious breeze.
But truly Sir Isumbras cared as much
For all that a happier heart might touch,
As Cottenham cares for a Highland reel,
When counsel opens a Scotch Appeal,
Or Hume for Pasta's glorious scenes,
When the House is voting the Ways and Means.
He had wandered, musing, scarce a mile,
In his melancholy mood,
When, peeping o'er a rustic stile,
He saw a little village smile,
Embowered in thick wood.
There were small cottages, arrayed
In the delicate jasmine's fragrant shade;
And gardens, whence the rose's bloom
Loaded the gale with rich perfume;
And there were happy hearts; for all
In that bright nook kept festival,

139

And welcomed in the merry May
With banquet and with roundelay.
Sir Isumbras sate gazing there,
With folded arms and mournful air;
He fancied—'twas an idle whim—
That the village looked like a home to him.
And now a gentle maiden came,
Leaving her sisters and their game,
And wandered up the vale;
Beauty so bright he had never seen,—
Saving her Majesty the Queen;—
But out on ugly doubts and fears!
Her eyes were very full of tears,
Her cheeks were very pale.
None courted her stay of the joyous throng,
As she passed from the group alone;
And he listened,—which was vastly wrong,—
And heard her singing a lively song,
In a very dismal tone:
“Deep is the bliss of the belted knight,
When he kisses at dawn the silken glove,
And goes, in his glittering armour dight,
To shiver a lance for his lady-love!”
That thrilling tone, so soft and clear,
Was it familiar to his ear?

140

And those delicious drooping eyes,
As blue and as pure as the summer skies,
Had he, indeed, in other days,
Been blessed in the light of their holy rays?
He knew not; but his knee he bent
Before her in most knightly fashion,
And grew superbly eloquent
About her beauty, and his passion.
He said that she was very fair,
And that she warbled like a linnet,
And that he loved her, though he ne'er
Had looked upon her till that minute:
He said, that all the Court possessed
Of gay or grave, of fat or slender,
Poor things! were only fit at best,
To hold a candle to her splendour:
He vowed that when she once should take
A little proper state upon her,
All lutes for her delight would wake,
All lances shiver in her honour:
He grieved to mention that a Jew
Had seized for debt his grand pavilion,
And he had little now, 'twas true,
To offer, but a heart and pillion;
But what of that? In many a fight,
Though he who shouldn't say it said it,

141

He still had borne him like a knight,
And had his share of blows and credit;
And if she would but condescend
To meet him at the priest's to-morrow,
And be henceforth his guide, his friend,
In every toil, in every sorrow,
They'd sail instanter from the Downs;
His hands just now were quite at leisure;
And, if she fancied foreign crowns,
He'd win them,—with the greatest pleasure.
“A year is gone,”—the damsel sighed,
But blushed not, as she so replied,—
“Since one I loved,—alas! how well
He knew not, knows not,—left our dell.
Time brings to his deserted cot
No tidings of his after lot;
But his weal or woe is still the theme
Of my daily thought, and my nightly dream.
Poor Alice is not proud or coy;
But her heart is with her minstrel boy.”
Away from his arms the damsel bounded,
And left him more and more confounded.
He mused of the present, he mused of the past,
And he felt that a spell was o'er him cast;
He shed hot tears, he knew not why,
And talked to himself and made reply;

142

Till a calm o'er his troubled senses crept,
And, as the daylight waned, he slept.
Poor gentleman!—I need not say,
Beneath an ancient oak he lay.

“He is welcome,”—o'er his bed,
Thus the bounteous Fairy said:

“He has conned the lesson now;
He has read the book of pain:
There are furrows on his brow,
I must make it smooth again.

“Lo, I knock the spurs away;
Lo, I loosen belt and brand;
Hark! I hear the courser neigh
For his stall in Fairy-land.

“Bring the cap, and bring the vest;
Buckle on his sandal shoon;
Fetch his memory from the chest
In the treasury of the moon.

“I have taught him to be wise,
For a little maiden's sake;—
Lo! he opens his glad eyes,
Softly, slowly:—Minstrel, wake!”

143

The sun has risen, and Wilfrid is come
To his early friends, and his cottage home.
His hazel eyes and his locks of gold
Are just as they were in the time of old:
But a blessing has been on the soul within,
For that is won from its secret sin,
More loving now, and worthier love
Of men below, and of saints above.
He reins a steed with a lordly air,
Which makes his country cousins stare;
And he speaks in a strange and courtly phrase,
Though his voice is the voice of other days:
But where he has learned to talk and ride,
He will tell to none but his bonny Bride.

144

THE LEGEND OF THE DRACHENFELS.

“Death be her doom! we must not spare,
Though the voice be sweet, though the face be fair,
When the looks deride and the lips blaspheme
The Serpent-God of our hallowed stream.

“Death be her doom! that the fearful King
May joy in the gift his votaries bring;
And smile on the valley, and smile on the rock,
To freshen the vine, and to fatten the flock.

“Death be her doom! ere the pitiless One
Leap from his rest at set of sun;
Seek from his crag his wonted prey,
And punish in wrath our long delay!”

It was a gray-haired Chief that said
The words of fate, the words of fear;

145

A battered casque was on his head,
And in his grasp a broken spear:
It was a captive maid that met,
Sedate, serene, the stern command;
Around her neck her beads were set,
An ivory cross was in her hand.

“Lead me away! I am weak and young,
Captive the fierce and the proud among;
But I will pray a humble prayer,
That the feeble to strike may be firm to bear.

“Lead me away! the voice may fail,
And the lips grow white, and the cheeks turn pale;
Yet will ye know that nought but sin
Chafes or changes the soul within.

“Lead me away! oh, dear to mine eyes
Are the flowery fields and the sunny skies;
But I cannot turn from the Cross divine,
To bend my knee at an idol's shrine.”

They clothe her in such rich array
As a bride prepares for her bridal day;
Around her forehead, that shines so bright,
They wreathe a wreath of roses white,
And set on her neck a golden chain,
Spoil of her sire in combat slain.

146

Over her head her doom is said;
And with folded arms, and measured tread,
In long procession, dark and slow,
Up the terrible hill they go,
Hymning their hymn, and crying their cry,
To him, their Demon Deity.—
Mary, Mother, sain and save!
The maiden kneels at the Dragon's cave!

Alas! 'tis frightful to behold
That thing of Nature's softest mould,
In whose slight shape and delicate hue
Life's loveliness beams fresh and new,
Bound on the bleak hill's topmost height,
To die, and by such death, to-night!
But yester-eve, when the red sun
His race of grateful toil had run,
And over earth the moon's soft rays
Lit up the hour of prayer and praise,
She bowed within the pleasant shade
By her own fragrant jasmine made;
And, while her clear and thrilling tone
Asked blessing from her Maker's throne,
Heard the notes echoed to her ear
From lips that were to her most dear.
Her sire, her kindred, round her knelt;
And the young Priestess knew and felt

147

That deeper love than that of men
Was in their natural temple then.
That love,—is now its radiance chill?
Fear not; it guides, it guards her, still!

The temper of our stoutest mail
In battle's fiery shock may fail;
The trustiest anchor may betray
Our vessel in the treacherous spray;
The dearest friend we ever knew
In our worst need may prove untrue:
But come what may of doubt or dread
About our lonely path or bed,
On tented field, or stormy wave,
In dungeon cell, or mountain cave,
In want, in pain, in death,—where'er
One meek heart prays, God's love is there!

The crowd departed: her wandering eye
Followed their steps, as they left her to die.
Down the steep and stern descent,
Strangely mingled, the Heathen went,
Palsied dotard, and beardless boy,
Sharers to-night in their savage joy,
Hoary priest, and warrior grim,
Shaking the lance, and chaunting the hymn;
And ever and anxiously looking back
To watch if yet on his slimy track

148

He rolled him forth, that ghastly guest,
To taste of the banquet he loved the best.

The crowd departed; and alone
She kneeled upon the rugged stone.
Alas! it was a dismal pause,
When the wild rabble's fierce applause
Died slowly on the answering air;
And, in the still and mute profound,
She started even at the sound
Of the half-thought half-spoken prayer
Her heart and lip had scarcely power
To feel or frame in that dark hour.
Fearful, yet blameless!—for her birth
Had been of Nature's common earth,
And she was nurst, in happier hours,
By Nature's common suns and showers;
And when one moment whirls away
Whate'er we know or trust to-day,
And opens that eternal book,
On which we long, and dread, to look,—
In that quick change of sphere and scope,
That rushing of the spirit's wings
From all we have to all we hope,
From mortal to immortal things,—
Though madly on the giddy brink
Despair may jest, and Guilt dissemble,

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White Innocence awhile will shrink,
And Piety be proud to tremble!

But quickly from her brow and cheek
The flush of human terror faded,
And she aroused, the maiden meek,
Her fainting spirit, self-upbraided,
And felt her secret soul renewed
In that her solemn solitude.
Unwonted strength to her was given
To bear the rod and drink the cup;
Her pulse beat calmer, and to Heaven
Her voice in firmer tone went up:
And as upon her gentle heart
The dew of holy peace descended,
She saw her last sunlight depart
With awe and hope so sweetly blended
Into a deep and tranquil sense
Of unpresuming confidence,
That if the blinded tribes, whose breath
Had doomed her to such dole and death,
Could but have caught one bright brief glance
Of that ungrieving countenance,
And marked the light of glory shed
Already o'er her sinless head,
The tears with which her eyes were full,—
Tears not of anguish,—and the smile
Of new-born rapture, which the while

150

As with a lustrous veil arrayed
Her brow, her cheek, her lip, and made
Her beauty more than beautiful,—
Oh, would they not have longed to share
Her torture,—yea! her transport, there?

“Father, my sins are very great;
Thou readest them, whate'er they be:
But penitence is all too late;
And unprepared I come to thee,
Uncleansed, unblessed, unshriven!

“Yet thou, in whose all-searching sight
No human thing is undefiled,—
Thou, who art merciful in might,
Father, thou wilt forgive thy child,—
Father, thou hast forgiven!

“Thy will, not hers, be done to-day!
If in this hour, and on this spot,
Her soul indeed must pass away
Among fierce men who know thee not,—
Thine is the breath thou gavest!

“Or if thou wilt put forth thine hand
And shield her from the jaws of flame,
That she may live to teach the land
Whose people hath not heard thy name,—
Thine be the life thou savest!”

151

So spoke the blessed maid, and now,
Crossing her hands upon her breast,
With quiet eye and placid brow
Awaited the destroying pest;
Not like a thing of sense and life
Soul-harassed in such bitter strife,
But tranquil, as a shape of stone
Upraised in ages long bygone
To mark where, closed her toilsome race,
Some sainted sister sleeps in grace.
Such might she seem: about her grew
Sweet wild-flowers, sweet of scent and hue;
And she had placed with pious care
Her crucifix before her there,
That her last look and thought might be
Of Christ and of the Holy Tree.

And now, methinks, at what my lay
Of this poor maid hath yet to say,
Will Wit assume a scornful look,
And Wisdom con a grave rebuke.
I heed them not; full oft there lies
In such time-honoured histories,
Hived through long ages in the store
Of the rude peasant's nursery lore,
A pathos of a deeper ruth.
A moral of a purer truth,

152

Than aught we study in the page
Of lofty bard or learned sage;
Therefore, my gentle Muse, prolong
In faith thy legendary song.

The day was gone, but it was not night:—
Whither so suddenly fled the light?
Nature seemed sick with a sore disease;
Over her hills and streams and trees
Unnatural darkness fell;
The earth and the heaven, the river and shore,
In the lurid mist were seen no more;
And the voice of the mountain monster rose,
As he lifted him up from his noontide repose,
First in a hiss, and then in a cry,
And then in a yell that shook the sky;—
The eagle from high fell down to die
At the sound of that mighty yell:
From his wide jaws broke, as in wrath he woke,
Scalding torrents of sulphurous smoke,
And crackling coals in mad ascent
As from a red volcano went,
And flames, like the flames of hell.
But his scream of fury waxed more shrill,
When on the peak of the blasted hill
He saw his victim bound:
Forth the Devourer, scale by scale,

153

Unveiled the folds of his steel-proof mail,
Stretching his throat, and stretching his tail,
And hither and thither rolling him o'er,
Till he covered fourscore feet and four
Of the wearied and wailing ground:
And at last he raised from his stony bed
The horrors of his speckled head;
Up like a comet the meteor went,
And seemed to shake the firmament,
And batter heaven's own walls!
For many a long mile, well I ween,
The fires that shot from those eyes were seen;
The Burschen of Bonn, if Bonn had been,
Would have shuddered in their halls.
Woe for the Virgin!—bootless here
Were glistening shield and whistling spear
Such battle to abide;
The mightiest engines that ever the trade
Of human homicide hath made,
Warwolf, balist, and catapult,
Would like a stripling's wand insult
That adamantine hide.
Woe for the Virgin!—

Lo! what spell
Hath scattered the darkness, and silenced the yell,
And quenched those fiery showers?—
Why turns the serpent from his prey?—

154

The Cross hath barred his terrible way,
The Cross among the flowers.
As an eagle pierced on his cloudy throne,
As a column sent from its base of stone,
Backward the stricken monster dropped;
Never he stayed, and never he stopped,
Till deep in the gushing tide he sank,
And buried lay beneath the stream,
Passing away like a loathsome dream.
Well may you guess how either bank
As with an earthquake shook;
The mountains rocked from brow to base;
The river boiled with a hideous din
As the burning mass fell heavily in;
And the wide wide Rhine, for a moment's space,
Was scorched into a brook.

Night passed, ere the multitude dared to creep,
Huddled together, up the steep;
They came to the stone; in speechless awe
They fell on their face at the sight they saw:
The maiden was free from hurt or harm,
But the iron had passed from her neck and arm,
And the glittering links of the broken chain
Lay scattered about like drops of rain.

And deem ye that the rescued child
To her father-land would come,—

155

That the remnant of her kindred smiled
Around her in her home,
And that she lived in love of earth,
Among earth's hopes and fears,
And gave God thanks for the daily birth
Of blessings in after years?—
Holy and happy, she turned not away
From the task her Saviour set that day;—
What was her kindred, her home, to her?
She had been Heaven's own messenger!

Short time went by from that dread hour
Of manifested wrath and power,
Ere from the cliff a rising shrine
Looked down upon the rolling Rhine.
Duly the virgin Priestess there
Led day by day the hymn and prayer;
And the dark Heathen round her pressed
To know their Maker, and be blessed.

L'ENVOI.

TO THE COUNTESS VON C---, BONN.

I

This is the Legend of the Drachenfels,—
Sweet theme, most feebly sung; and yet to me
My feeble song is grateful; for it tells
Of far-off smiles and voices. Though it be

156

Unmeet, fair Lady, for thy breast or bower,
Yet thou wilt wear, for thou didst plant, the flower

II

It had been worthier of such birth and death
If it had bloomed where thou hadst watched its rise
Fanned by the zephyr of thy fragrant breath,
Warmed by the sunshine of thy gentle eyes,
And cherished by the love, in whose pure shade
No evil thing can live, no good thing fade.

III

It will be long ere thou wilt shed again
Thy praise or censure on my childish lays,—
Thy praise, which makes me happy more than vain,
Thy censure, kinder than another's praise.
Huge mountains frown between us, and the swell
Of the hoarse sea is mocking my farewell.

IV

Yet not the less, dear Friend. thy guiding light
Shines through the secret chambers of my thought;
Or when I waken, with revived delight,
The lute young Fancy to my cradle brought,
Or when I visit with a studious brow
The less-loved task, to which I turn me now.

157

THE BRIDAL OF BELMONT.

A LEGEND OF THE RHINE.

Where foams and flows the glorious Rhine,
Many a ruin, wan and gray,
O'erlooks the corn-field and the vine,
Majestic in its dark decay.
Among their dim clouds, long ago,
They mocked the battles that raged below,
And greeted the guests in arms that came,
With hissing arrow and scalding flame.
But there is not one of the homes of pride
That frown on the breast of the peaceful tide,
Whose leafy walls more proudly tower
Than these, the walls of Belmont Tower.

Where foams and flows the glorious Rhine,
Many a fierce and fiery lord
Did carve the meat, and pour the wine,
For all that revelled at his board.

158

Father and son, they were all alike,
Firm to endure, and fast to strike;
Little they loved but a Frau or a feast,
Nothing they feared but a prayer or a priest;
But there was not one in all the land
More trusty of heart, more stout of hand,
More valiant in field, or more courteous in bower
Than Otto, the Lord of Belmont Tower.

His eyes were bright, his eyes were blue,
As summer's sun, as summer's heaven;
His age was barely twenty-two;
His height was just five feet eleven:
His hounds were of the purest strain,
His hawks the best from every nation;
His courser's tail, his courser's mane,
Was all the country's admiration:
His frowns were lightnings, charged with fate;
His smiles were shafts from Cupid's quiver;
He had a very old estate,
And the best vineyards on the river.
So ancient dames, you need not doubt,
Would wink and nod their pride and pleasare,
Whene'er the youthful Count led out
Their eldest or their youngest treasure,
Take notes of what his Lordship said
On shapes and colours, songs and dances,

159

And make their maidens white or red,
According to his Lordship's fancies.
They whispered, too, from time to time,
What might escape the Count's inspection;
That Linda's soul was all sublime;
That Gertrude's taste was quite perfection:
Or blamed some people's forward tricks,
And very charitably hinted,
Their neighbour's niece was twenty-six,
Their cousin's clever daughter squinted.

Are you rich, single, and “your Grace”?
I pity your unhappy case.
Before you launch your first new carriage,
The women have arranged your marriage;
Where'er your weary wit may lead you,
They pet you, praise you, fret you, feed you;
Consult your taste in wreaths and laces,
And make you make their books at races:
Your little pony, Tam O'Shanter,
Is found to have the sweetest canter;
Your curricle is quite reviving,
And Jane's so bold when you are driving!
One recollects your father's habits,
And knows the warren, and the rabbits!
The place is really princely-only
They're sure you'll find it vastly lonely:

160

Another, in more tender phrases,
Records your sainted mother's praises;
Pronounces her the best of creatures,
And finds in you her tones and features.
You go to Cheltenham for the waters,
And meet the Countess and her daughters;
You take a cottage at Geneva—
Lo! Lady Anne and Lady Eva.
After a struggle of a session,
You just surrender at discretion,
And live to curse the frauds of mothers,
And envy all your younger brothers.

Count Otto bowed, Count Otto smiled,
When my Lady praised her darling child;
Count Otto smiled, Count Otto bowed,
When the child those praises disavowed;
But out on the cold one! he cared not a rush
For the motherly pride, or the maidenly blush.
As a knight should gaze, Count Otto gazed,
Where Bertha in all her beauty blazed;
As a knight should hear, Count Otto heard,
When Liba sang like a forest bird;
But he thought, I trow, about as long
Of Bertha's beauty and Liba's song,
As the sun may think of the clouds that play
O'er his radiant path on a summer day.

161

Many a maid had dreams of state,
As the Count rode up to her father's gate;
Many a maid shed tears of pain,
As the Count rode back to his tower again;
But little he cared, as it should seem,
For the sad, sad tear, or the fond, fond dream;
Alone he lived—alone and free
As the owl that dwells in the hollow tree;
And belles and barons said and swore,
That never was knight so shy before!

It was almost the first of May:
The sun all smiles had passed away;
The moon was beautifully bright;
Earth, heaven, as usual in such cases,
Looked up and down with happy faces;—
In short, it was a charming night.
And all alone, at twelve o'clock,
The young Count clambered down the rock,
Unfurled the sail, unchained the oar,
And pushed the shallop from the shore.
The holiness that sweet time flings
Upon all human thoughts and things,
When Sorrow checks her idle sighs,
And Care shuts fast her wearied eyes,—
The splendour of the hues that played
Fantastical o'er hill and glade,

162

As verdant slope and barren cliff
Seemed darting by the tiny skiff,—
The flowers, whose faint tips, here and there,
Breathed out such fragrance, you might swear
That every soundless gale that fanned
The tide came fresh from fairy-land,—
The music of the mountain rill,
Leaping in glee from hill to hill,
To which some wild bird, now and then,
Made answer from her darksome glen,—
All this to him had rarer pleasure
Than jester's wit or minstrel's measure;
And, if you ever loved romancing,
Or felt extremely tired of dancing,
You'll hardly wonder that Count Otto
Left, for the scene my muse is painting,
The Lady Hildebrand's ridotto,
Where all the Rhenish world was fainting.

What melody glides o'er the star-lit stream?
“Lurley!—Lurley!”
Angels of grace! does the young Count dream?
“Lurley!—Lurley!”
Or is the scene indeed so fair
That a nymph of the sea or a nymph of the air
Has left the home of her own delight,
To sing to our roses and rocks to-night?
“Lurley!—Lurley!”

163

Words there are none; but the waves prolong
The notes of that mysterious song:
He listens, he listens; and all around
Ripples the echo of that sweet sound,
“Lurley!—Lurley!”
No form appears on the river side;
No boat is borne on the wandering tide;
And the tones ring on, with nought to show
Or whence they come or whither they go;—
“Lurley!—Lurley!”
As fades one murmur on the ear,
There comes another, just as clear;
And the present is like to the parted strain,
As link to link of a golden chain:
“Lurley!—Lurley!”
Whether the voice be sad or gay,
'Twere very hard for the Count to say;
But pale are his cheeks, and pained his brow,
And the boat drifts on, he recks not how;
His pulse is quick, and his heart is wild,
And he weeps, he weeps, like a little child.

O mighty music! they who know
The witchery of thy wondrous bow,
Forget, when thy strange spells have bound them,
The visible world that lies around them.
When Lady Mary sings Rossini,
Or stares at spectral Paganini,

164

To Lady Mary does it matter
Who laugh, who love, who frown, who flatter?
Oh no! she cannot heed or hear
Reason or rhyme from prince or peer:
In vain for her Sir Charles denounces
The horror of the last new flounces;
In vain her friend the Member raves
Of ballot, bullion, sugars, slaves;
Predicts the nation's future glories,
And chants the requiem of the Tories;
And if some fond and foolish lisper
Recites, in passion's softest whisper,
The raptures which young love imparts
To mutual minds and kindred hearts,—
Poor boy,—she minds him just as much
As if'twere logic, or High Dutch.

As little did the young Knight care,—
While still he listened to the air
Breathed by some melodist unseen,
Much wondering what it all might mean,—
For those odd changes of the sky,
To dark from bright, to moist from dry,
Which furnish to the British nation
Three quarters of its conversation.
Meantime a gust, a drop, a flash
Had warned, perhaps, a youth less rash,

165

To shun a storm of fiercer fury,
Than ever stunned the gods of Drury.

Hid was the bright heaven's loveliness
Beneath a sudden cloud,
As a bride might doff her bridal dress
To don her funeral shroud;
And over flood and over fell,
With a wild and wicked shout,
From the secret cell where in chains they dwell,
The joyous winds rushed out;
And, the tall hills through, the thunder flew,
And down the fierce hail came;
And from peak to peak the lightning threw
Its shafts of liquid flame.
The boat went down; without delay,
The luckless boatman swooned away:
And when, as a clear spring morning rose,
He woke in wonder from repose,
The river was calm as the river could be,
And the thrush was awake on the gladsome tree,
And there he lay, in a sunny cave,
On the margin of the tranquil wave,
Half deaf with that infernal din,
And wet, poor fellow, to the skin.

He looked to the left and he looked to the right:
Why hastened he not, the noble Knight,

166

To dry his aged nurse's tears,
To calm the hoary butler's fears.
To listen to the prudent speeches
Of half a dozen loquacious leeches,
To swallow cordials circumspectly,
And change his dripping cloak directly?
With foot outstretched, with hand upraised.
In vast surprise he gazed and gazed.
Within a deep and damp recess
A maiden lay in her loveliness!
Lived she?—in sooth 'twere hard to tell,
Sleep counterfeited Death so well.
A shelf of the rock was all her bed;
A ceiling of crystal was o'er her head;
Silken veil, nor satin vest,
Shrouded her form in its silent rest;
Only her long long golden hair
About her lay like a thin robe there.
Up to her couch the young Knight crept:
How very sound the maiden slept!
Fearful and faint the young Knight sighed:
The echoes of the cave replied.
He leaned to look upon her face;
He clasped her hand in a wild embrace;
Never was form of such fine mould;
But the hands and the face were as white and cold
As they of the Parian stone were made,
To which, in great Minerva's shade,

167

The Athenian sculptor's toilsome knife
Gave all of loveliness but life.
On her fair neck there seemed no stain
Where the pure blood coursed through the delicate vein;
And her breath, if breath indeed it were,
Flowed in a current so soft and rare,
It would scarcely have stirred the young moth's wing
On the path of his noonday wandering—
Never on earth a creature trod,
Half so lovely, or half so odd.

Count Otto stares till his eyelids ache,
And wonders when she'll please to wake;
While fancy whispers strange suggestions,
And wonder prompts a score of questions.
Is she a nymph of another sphere?
How came she hither? what doth she here?
Or if the morning of her birth
Be registered on this our earth,
Why hath she fled from her father's halls?
And where hath she left her cloaks and shawls?
There was no time for reason's lectures,
There was no time for wit's conjectures;
He threw his arm with timid haste
Around the maiden's slender waist,
And raised her up, in a modest way,
From the cold bare rock on which she lay:

168

He was but a mile from his castle gate,
And the lady was scarcely five stone weight;
He stopped in less than half an hour,
With his beauteous burden, at Belmont Tower.

Gaily, I ween, was the chamber drest,
As the Count gave order, for his guest;
But scarcely on the couch, 'tis said,
That gentle guest was fairly laid,
When she opened at once her great blue eyes,
And, after a glance of brief surprise,
Ere she had spoken, and ere she had heard
Of wisdom or wit a single word,
She laughed so long, and laughed so loud,
That Dame Ulrica often vowed
A dirge is a merrier thing by half
Than such a senseless soulless laugh.
Around the tower the elfin crew
Seemed shouting in mirthful concert too;
And echoed roof, and trembled rafter,
With that unsentimental laughter.

As soon as that droll tumult passed,
The maiden's tongue, unchained at last,
Asserted all its female right,
And talked and talked with all its might.
Oh, how her low and liquid voice
Made the rapt hearer's soul rejoice!

169

'Twas full of those clear tones that start
From innocent childhood's happy heart,
Ere passion and sin disturb the well
In which their mirth and music dwell.
But man nor master could make out
What the eloquent maiden talked about;
The things she uttered like did seem
To the babbling waves of a limpid stream;
For the words of her speech, if words they might be,
Were the words of a speech of a far countrie;
And when she had said them o'er and o'er,
Count Otto understood no more
Than you or I of the slang that falls
From dukes and dupes at Tattersall's,
Of Hebrew from a bearded Jew,
Or metaphysics from a Blue.

Count Otto swore,—Count Otto's reading
Might well have taught him better breeding,—
That, whether the maiden should fume or fret,
The maiden should not leave him yet;
And so he took prodigious pains
To make her happy in her chains.
From Paris came a pair of cooks,
From Gottingen a load of books,
From Venice stores of gorgeous suits,
From Florence minstrels and their lutes:

170

The youth himself had special pride
In breaking horses for his bride;
And his old tutor, Dr. Hermann,
Was brought from Bonn to teach her German.

He who with curious step hath strayed
Alone through some suburban shade,
To rural Chelsea sauntering down,
Or wandering over Camden Town,
The sacred mansions oft has seen,
Whose walls are white, whose gates are green,
Where ladies with respected names,
Miss Black, Miss Brown, Miss Jenks, Miss James,
For fifty pounds a year or so
Teach beauty all it ought to know,—
How long have been the reigns and lives
Of British monarchs and their wives,—
How fast the twinkling planets run,
From age to age, about the sun,—
The depths of lakes, the heights of hills,
The rule of three, the last quadrilles,
Italian airs, Parisian phrases,
The class and sex of shells and daisies,
The rules of grammar and of grace,
Right sentiments, and thorough-bass.
There quick the young idea shoots,
And bears its blossoms and its fruits.

171

The rosy nymph, who nothing knows
But just to scream a noisy ballad
To mend her little brother's hose.
To make a cake, or mix a salad,
Tormented for a year or two,
(So fast the female wit advances)
Shall grow superlatively blue,
And print a volume of romances.

But ne'er did any forward child,
In any such sequestered college,
Trip faster than my maiden wild
Through every path of useful knowledge.
In May o'er grassy hill and vale
Like some young fawn's her footsteps bounded;
In May upon the morning gale
Like some blithe bird's her carols sounded:
June came;—she practised pirouettes
That might have puzzled Bigottini,
And decked her simple canzonets
With shakes that would have charmed Rossini.
In spring to her the A. B. C.
Appeared a mystery quite as murky
As galvanism to Owhyhee,
Or annual Parliaments to Turkey;
But when upon the flood and fell
Brown autumn's earliest storms were low'ring.

172

She was quite competent to spell
Through all the books of Doctor Bowring.

No cheerful friend, no quiet guest,
Doth Wisdom come to human breast;
She brings the day-beam, but in sooth
She brings its trouble with its truth.
With every cloud that flits and flies
Some dear delusion fades and dies;
With every flash of perfect light
Some loveless prospect blasts the sight.
Shut up the page; for in its lore
Are fears and doubts unfelt before:
Fling down the wreath; for sorrow weaves
Amid the laurel cypress leaves.

Moons waxed and waned; and you might trace
In the captive maiden gradual change;
Ever and ever of form and face
Some charm seemed fresh and new and strange:
Over her cold and colourless cheek
The blush of the rose began to glow,
And her quickened pulse began to speak
Of human bliss and human woe;
Her features kept their beauty still,
But a graver shade was o'er them thrown;
Her voice had yet its clear soft thrill,
But its echo took a sadder tone.

173

Oft, till the Count came up from wine,
She sat alone by the lattice high,
Tracing the course of the rolling Rhine
With a moody brow and a wistful eye;
Still, as the menials oft averred,
Talking and talking, low and long,
In that droll language which they heard,
At her first coming, from her tongue.
None but the Pope of Rome, they deemed,
Could construe what the damsel said;
But this they knew, by turns she seemed
To soothe, to threaten, to upbraid.
And oft on a crag at dawn she stood,
Her golden harp in her pretty hand,
And sang such songs to the gurgling flood
As an exile sings to his native land;
Till, if a listener dared intrude,
She hastened back to the postern-gate,
Blushing, as if her solitude
Were as dear and as wrong as a tête-à-tête.

'Twas wondrous all; but most of all,
That, held in strict though gentle thrall,
She seemed so slow to take upon her
The style and state of threatened honour.
For often, when on bended knee
Count Otto pressed his amorous plea,

174

And begged, before his heart should break,
She'd be a Countess for his sake,
Without the slightest show of flurry,
She chid his heat, and checked his hurry:
He might allow her time, she said,
To learn the life his Lordship led;
Such hawking, hunting, dining, drinking,—
At times she felt her poor heart sinking!
At home, in bed the livelong day,
She lived in such a different way;
So calm, so cool,—her father's daughter
Was ne'er a minute in hot water.
Then their acquaintance, she must state,
Was of a very recent date;
They met in May, he should remember,
And now were hardly in December;
Such eyes as hers, she had a notion,
Were worth at least a year's devotion.
Her kindred had their fancies too
Of what young ladies ought to do:
All sorts of mischief might befall,
If rashly in her father's hall
Before twelve months of courtship ended
She showed her face with her intended.—
But where that father's hall?—vain, vain;
She turned her eyes in silence down;
And if you dared to ask again,
Her only answer was a frown.

175

Some people have a knack, we know,
Of saying things mal-à-propos,
And making all the world reflect
On what it hates to recollect.
They talk to misers of their heir,
To women of the days that were,
To ruined gamblers of the box,
To thin defaulters of the stocks,
To poets of the wrong Review,
And to the French of Waterloo.
The Count was not of these; he never
Was half so clumsy, half so clever;
And when he found the girl would rather
Say nothing more about her father,
He changed the subject—told a fable—
Believed that dinner was on table—
Or hinted, with an air of sorrow,
The certainty of rain to-morrow.

Meantime the world began to prate
Of young Count Otto's purposed marriage;
Discussed the jewels and the plate,
Described the dresses and the carriage.
The lady's rank, the lady's name,
As usual in such curious cases,
Were asked by many a noble dame,
With most expressive tones and faces;

176

The grave and gay, the old and young,
Looked very arch, or very serious;
Some whispered something that was wrong,
Some murmured much that was mysterious.
One aunt, a strict old maiden, thought,—
And could not bear the thought to smother,—
Young persons positively ought
To have a father and a mother;
And wondered, with becoming scorn,
How far presumption might be carried,
When hussies who had ne'er been born
Began to think of being married:
Another, fair, and kind as fair,
Was heard by many to protest
It was her daily wish and prayer
That she might see her nephew blest;
And though, as matters stood, of course
'Twas quite impossible to call
On somebody, whom she perforce
Considered nobody at all,
When once the Church had done its part.
And ratified the Count's selection,
She'd clasp the Countess to her heart,
Impromptu, with profound affection.

The winter storms went darkly by,
And, from a blue and cloudless sky,

177

Again the sun looked cheerfully
Upon the rolling Rhine;
And spring brought back to the budding flowers
Its genial light and freshening showers,
And music to the shady bowers,
And verdure to the vine.
And now it is the first of May;
For twenty miles round all is gay;
Cottage and castle keep holiday;
For how should sorrow lower
On brow of rustic or of knight,
When heaven itself looks all so bright,
Where Otto's wedding feast is dight
In the hall of Belmont Tower?
For the maiden's hair the wreath is wrought;
For the maiden's hand the ring is bought;
Be she a Fiend, or be she a Fay,
She shall be Otto's bride to-day.
And he,—for he at last discovers
That “no” is a word unfit for lovers,—
Has promised, as soon as the priest has done
The terrible rite that makes them one,
To step with her to the carriage and four
That waits e'en now at the castle-door,
And post to visit, “although,” saith she,
“A very odd road our road may be,”
Her father, her mother, and two or three dozens
Of highly respectable aunts and cousins:

178

And he has sanctioned his consent,
Lest he should happen to repent,
By a score or more of the oaths that slip,
As matters of course, from a bridegroom's lip

Stately matron and warrior tall
Come to the joyous festival;
Gladly Otto welcomes all,
As through the gate they throng;
He fills to the brim the wassail cup;
In the bright wine pleasure sparkles up,
And draughts and tales grow long;
But grizzly knights are still and mute,
And dames set down the untasted fruit,
When the bride awakes her golden lute,
And charms them all with song.

“The dawn is past, the dusk comes fast,
No longer may I roam;
Full soon, full soon, the young May moon
Will guide the truant home:
Hasten we, hasten, groom and bride;
How merry we shall be!
Now open, father, open wide.
Let in my lord with me.

“Though treasures old of silver and gold
Lie in thy secret store,

179

I bring thee to-night, to charm thy sight,
Gifts thou wilt value more;
Knightly valour, and lordly pride,
Leal heart, and spirit free;—
Now open, father, open wide,
Let in my lord with me.

“I hear, I hear, with joy and fear,
The old familiar tone;
I hear him call to his ancient hall
His favourite, his own:
How will he chafe and how will he chide!
For a fretful mood hath he;—
Now open, father, open wide,
Let in my lord with me!”

The nurses to the children say
That, as the maiden sang that day,
The Rhine to the heights of the beetling tower
Sent up a cry of fiercer power,
And again the maiden's cheek was grown
As white as ever was marble stone,
And the bridesmaid her hand could hardly hold,
Its fingers were so icy cold.

Rose Count Otto from the feast,
As entered the hall the hoary Priest.

180

A stalwart warrior, well I ween,
That hoary Priest in his youth had been;
But the might of his manhood he had given
To penance and prayer, the Church and Heaven.
For he had travelled o'er land and wave;
He had kneeled on many a martyr's grave;
He had prayed in the meek St. Jerome's cell,
And had tasted St. Anthony's blessed well;
And reliques round his neck had he,
Each worth a haughty kingdom's fee;
Scrapings of bones, and points of spears,
And vials of authentic tears,
From a prophet's coffin a hallowed nail,
And a precious shred of our Lady's veil.
And therefore at his awful tread
The powers of darkness shrank with dread;
And Satan felt that no disguise
Could hide him from those chastened eyes.
He looked on the bridegroom, he looked on the bride,
The young Count smiled, but the old Priest sighed.

“Fields with the father I have won;
I am come in my cowl to bless the son.
Count Otto, ere thou bend thy knee,
What shall the hire of my service be?”

“Greedy hawk must gorge his prey;
Pious priest must grasp his pay.

181

Name the guerdon, and so to the task;
Thine it is, ere thy lips can ask!”

He frowned as he answered—“Gold and gem,
Count Otto, little I reck of them;
But your bride has skill of the lute, they say.
Let her sing me the song I shall name to-day.”

Loud laughed the Count: “And if she refuse
The ditty, Sir Priest, thy whim shall choose,
Row back to the house of old St. Goar;
I never bid priest to a bridal more.”

Beside the maiden he took his stand;
He gave the lute to her trembling hand;
She gazed around with a troubled eye;
The guests all shuddered, and knew not why;
It seemed to them as if a gloom
Had shrouded all the banquet-room,
Though over its boards and over its beams
Sunlight was glowing in merry streams.

The stern Priest throws an angry glance
On that pale creature's countenance;
Unconsciously her white hand flings
Its soft touch o'er the answering strings;
The good man starts with a sudden thrill,
And half relents from his purposed will;

182

But he signs the Cross on his aching brow,
And arms his soul for its warfare now.

“Mortal maid or goblin fairy,
Sing me, I pray thee, an Ave Mary!”

Suddenly the maiden bent
O'er the gorgeous instrument;
But of song the listeners heard
Only one wild mournful word—
“Lurley,—Lurley!”
And when the sound in the liquid air
Of that brief hymn had faded,
Nothing was left of the nymph who there
For a year had masqueraded,
But the harp in the midst of the wide hall set
Where her last strange word was spoken;—
The golden frame with tears was wet,
And all the strings were broken.

184

THE LEGEND OF THE TEUFEL-HAUS.

The way was lone, and the hour was late,
And Sir Rudolph was far from his castle gate.
The night came down by slow degrees
On the river stream, and the forest-trees;
And by the heat of the heavy air,
And by the lightning's distant glare,
And by the rustling of the woods,
And by the roaring of the floods,
In half an hour, a man might say,
The Spirit of Storm would ride that way.
But little he cared, that stripling pale,
For the sinking sun, or the rising gale;
For he, as he rode, was dreaming now,
Poor youth, of a woman's broken vow,
Of the cup dashed down, ere the wine was tasted,
Of eloquent speeches sadly wasted,
Of a gallant heart all burnt to ashes,
And the Baron of Katzberg's long mustaches.
So the earth below, and the heaven above,
He saw them not;—those dreams of love,
As some have found, and some will find,
Make men extremely deaf and blind.

185

At last he opened his great blue eyes,
And looking about in vast surprise,
Found that his hunter had turned his back
An hour ago on the beaten track,
And now was threading a forest hoar,
Where steed had never stepped before.

“By Cæsar's head,” Sir Rudolph said,
“It were a sorry joke,
If I to-night should make my bed
On the turf, beneath an oak!
Poor Roland reeks from head to hoof;—
Now, for thy sake, good roan,
I would we were beneath a roof,
Were it the foul fiend's own!”

Ere the tongue could rest, ere the lips could close,
The sound of a listener's laughter rose.
It was not the scream of a merry boy
When Harlequin waves his wand of joy;
Nor the shout from a serious curate, won
By a bending bishop's annual pun;
Nor the roar of a Yorkshire clown;—oh, no!
It was a gentle laugh, and low;
Half uttered, perhaps, and stifled half,
A good old-gentlemanly laugh;
Such as my uncle Peter's are,
When he tells you his tales of Dr. Parr.

186

The rider looked to the left and the right,
With something of marvel, and more of fright:
But brighter gleamed his anxious eye,
When a light shone out from a hill hard by.
Thither he spurred, as gay and glad
As Mrs. Macquill's delighted lad,
When he turns away from the Pleas of the Crown
Or flings, with a yawn, old Saunders down,
And flies, at last, from all the mysteries
Of Plaintiffs' and Defendants' histories,
To make himself sublimely neat,
For Mrs. Camac's in Mansfield Street.

At a lofty gate Sir Rudolph halted;
Down from his seat Sir Rudolph vaulted:
And he blew a blast with might and main,
On the bugle that hung by an iron chain.
The sound called up a score of sounds;—
The screeching of owls, and the baying of hounds
The hollow toll of the turret bell,
The call of the watchful sentinel,
And a groan at last, like a peal of thunder
As the huge old portals rolled asunder
And gravely from the castle hall
Paced forth the white-robed seneschal.
He stayed not to ask of what degree
So fair and famished a knight might be;

187

But knowing that all untimely question
Ruffles the temper, and mars the digestion,
He laid his hand upon the crupper,
And said,—“You're just in time for supper!”

They led him to the smoking board,
And placed him next to the castle's Lord.
He looked around with a hurried glance:
You may ride from the border to fair Penzance
And nowhere, but at Epsom Races,
Find such a group of ruffian faces
As thronged that chamber: some were talking
Of feats of hunting and of hawking,
And some were drunk, and some were dreaming,
And some found pleasure in blaspheming.
He thought, as he gazed on the fearful crew,
That the lamps that burned on the walls burned blue.
They brought him a pasty of mighty size,
To cheer his heart, and to charm his eyes;
They brought the wine, so rich and old,
And filled to the brim the cup of gold;
The Knight looked down, and the Knight looked up,
But he carved not the meat, and he drained not the cup.

“Ho, ho,” said his host with angry brow,
“I wot our guest is fine;
Our fare is far too coarse, I trow,
For such nice taste as thine:

188

Yet trust me I have cooked the food,
And I have filled the can,
Since I have lived in this old wood,
For many a nobler man.”—
“The savoury buck and the ancient cask
To a weary man are sweet;
But ere he taste, it is fit he ask
For a blessing on bowl and meat.
Let me but pray for a minute's space,
And bid me pledge ye then;
I swear to ye, by our Lady's grace,
I shall eat and drink like ten!”

The Lord of the castle in wrath arose,
He frowned like a fiery dragon;
Indignantly he blew his nose,
And overturned a flagon.
And “Away,” quoth he, “with the canting priest,
Who comes uncalled to a midnight feast,
And breathes through a helmet his holy benison,
To sour my hock, and spoil my venison!”

That moment all the lights went out;
And they dragged him forth, that rabble rout,
With oath, and threat, and foul scurrility,
And every sort of incivility.
They barred the gates; and the peal of laughter,
Sudden and shrill, that followed after,

189

Died off into a dismal tone,
Like a parting spirit's painful moan.
“I wish,” said Rudolph, as he stood
On foot in the deep and silent wood;
“I wish, good Roland, rack and stable
May be kinder to-night than their master's table!”

By this the storm had fleeted by;
And the moon with a quiet smile looked out
From the glowing arch of a cloudless sky,
Flinging her silvery beams about
On rock, tree, wave, and gladdening all
With just as miscellaneous bounty,
As Isabel's, whose sweet smiles fall
In half an hour on half the county.
Less wild Sir Rudolph's pathway seemed,
As he turned from that discourteous tower
Small spots of verdure gaily gleamed
On either side; and many a flower,
Lily, and violet, and heart's-ease,
Grew by the way, a fragrant border;
And the tangled boughs of the hoary trees
Were twined in picturesque disorder:
And there came from the grove, and there came from the hill
The loveliest sounds he had ever heard,
The checrful voice of the dancing rill,
And the sad sad song of the lonely bird.

190

And at last he stared with wondering eyes,
As well he might, on a huge pavilion:
'Twas clothed with stuffs of a hundred dyes,
Blue, purple, orange, pink, vermilion;
And there were quaint devices traced
All round in the Saracenic manner;
And the top, which gleamed like gold, was graced
With the drooping folds of a silken banner;
And on the poles, in silent pride,
There sat small doves of white enamel;
And the veil from the entrance was drawn aside,
And flung on the humps of a silver camel.
In short, it was the sweetest thing
For a weary youth in a wood to light on;
And finer far than what a King
Built up, to prove his taste, at Brighton.

The gilded gate was all unbarred;
And, close beside it, for a guard,
There lay two dwarfs with monstrous noses,
Both fast asleep upon some roses.
Sir Rudolph entered; rich and bright
Was all that met his ravished sight;
Soft tapestries from far countries brought,
Rare cabinets with gems inwrought,
White vases of the finest mould,
And mirrors set in burnished gold.
Upon a couch a greyhound slumbered;

191

And a small table was encumbered
With paintings, and an ivory lute,
And sweetmeats, and delicious fruit.
Sir Rudolph lost no time in praising;
For he, I should have said, was gazing,
In attitude extremely tragic,
Upon a sight of stranger magic;
A sight, which, seen at such a season,
Might well astonish Mistress Reason,
And scare Dame Wisdom from her fences
Of rules and maxims, moods and tenses.

Beneath a crimson canopy,
A lady, passing fair, was lying;
Deep sleep was on her gentle eye,
And in her slumber she was sighing
Bewitching sighs, such sighs as say
Beneath the moonlight, to a lover,
Things which the coward tongue by day
Would not, for all the world, discover:
She lay like a shape of sculptured stone,
So pale, so tranquil:—she had thrown,
For the warm evening's sultriness,
The broidered coverlet aside;
And nothing was there to deck or hide
The glory of her loveliness,
But a scarf of gauze so light and thin
You might see beneath the dazzling skin,

192

And watch the purple streamlets go
Through the valleys of white and stainless snow,
Or here and there a wayward tress,
Which wandered out with vast assurance
From the pearls that kept the rest in durance,
And fluttered about, as if 'twould try
To lure a zephyr from the sky.

“Bertha!”—large drops of anguish came
On Rudolph's brow, as he breathed that name,—
“O fair and false one, wake, and fear!
I, the betrayed, the scorned, am here.”
The eye moved not from its dull eclipse,
The voice came not from the fast-shut lips;
No matter! well that gazer knew
The tone of bliss, and the eyes of blue.

Sir Rudolph hid his burning face
With both his hands, for a minute's space,
And all his frame, in awful fashion,
Was shaken by some sudden passion.
What guilty fancies o'er him ran?—
Oh! Pity will be slow to guess them;
And never, save to the holy man,
Did good Sir Rudolph e'er confess them.
But soon his spirit you might deem
Came forth from the shade of the fearful dream;

193

His cheek, though pale, was calm again,
And he spoke in peace, though he spoke in pain:

“Not mine! not mine! now Mary, mother,
Aid me the sinful hope to smother!
Not mine, not mine!—I have loved thee long,
Thou hast quitted me with grief and wrong;
But pure the heart of a knight should be,—
Sleep on, sleep on! thou art safe for me.
Yet shalt thou know by a certain sign
Whose lips have been so near to thine,
Whose eyes have looked upon thy sleep,
And turned away, and longed to weep,
Whose heart,—mourn—madden as it will,—
Has spared thee, and adored thee still!”

His purple mantle, rich and wide,
From his neck the trembling youth untied,
And flung it o'er those dangerous charms,
The swelling neck, and the rounded arms.
Once more he looked, once more he sighed;
And away, away from the perilous tent,
Swift as the rush of an eagle's wing
Or the flight of a shaft from Tartar string,
Into the wood Sir Rudolph went:
Not with more joy the schoolboys run
To the gay green fields, when their task is done;—

194

Not with more haste the members fly,
When Hume has caught the Speaker's eye

At last the daylight came; and then
A score or two of serving men,
Supposing that some sad disaster
Had happened to their lord and master,
Went out into the wood, and found him
Unhorsed, and with no mantle round him.
Ere he could tell his tale romantic,
The leech pronounced him clearly frantic,
So ordered him at once to bed,
And clapped a blister on his head.

Within the sound of the castle clock
There stands a huge and rugged rock;
And I have heard the peasants say,
That the grieving groom at noon that day
Found gallant Roland, cold and stiff,
At the base of the black and beetling cliff.

Beside the rock there is an oak,
Tall, blasted by the thunder-stroke;
And I have heard the peasants say,
That there Sir Rudolph's mantle lay,
And coiled in many a deadly wreath
A venomous serpent slept beneath.

195

THE RED FISHERMAN,

OR THE DEVIL'S DECOY.

“Oh flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!”
Romeo and Juliet

The Abbot arose, and closed his book,
And donned his sandal shoon,
And wandered forth, alone, to look
Upon the summer moon:
A starlight sky was o'er his head,
A quiet breeze around;
And the flowers a thrilling fragrance shed
And the waves a soothing sound:
It was not an hour, nor a scene, for aught
But love and calm delight;
Yet the holy man had a cloud of thought
On his wrinkled brow that night.
He gazed on the river that gurgled by,
But he thought not of the reeds;
He clasped his gilded rosary,
But he did not tell the beads;
If he looked to the heaven, 'twas not to invoke
The Spirit that dwelleth there;
If he opened his lips, the words they spoke
Had never the tone of prayer.

196

A pious priest might the Abbot seem,
He had swayed the crozier well;
But what was the theme of the Abbot's dream,
The Abbot were loth to tell.

Companionless, for a mile or more,
He traced the windings of the shore.
Oh, beauteous is that river still,
As it winds by many a sloping hill,
And many a dim o'erarching grove,
And many a flat and sunny cove,
And terraced lawns, whose bright arcades
The honeysuckle sweetly shades,
And rocks, whose very crags seem bowers,
So gay they are with grass and flowers!
But the Abbot was thinking of scenery
About as much, in sooth,
As a lover thinks of constancy,
Or an advocate of truth.
He did not mark how the skies in wrath
Grew dark above his head;
He did not mark how the mossy path
Grew damp beneath his tread;
And nearer he came, and still more near,
To a pool, in whose recess
The water had slept for many a year,
Unchanged and motionless;

197

From the river stream it spread away
The space of half a rood;
The surface had the hue of clay
And the scent of human blood;
The trees and the herbs that round it grew
Were venomous and foul,
And the birds that through the bushes flew
Were the vulture and the owl;
The water was as dark and rank
As ever a Company pumped,
And the perch, that was netted and laid on the bank,
Grew rotten while it jumped;
And bold was he who thither came
At midnight, man or boy,
For the place was cursed with an evil name,
And that name was “The Devil's Decoy!”

The Abbot was weary as abbot could be,
And he sat down to rest on the stump of a tree:
When suddenly rose a dismal tone,—
Was it a song, or was it a moan?—
“O ho! O ho!
Above,—below,—
Lightly and brightly they glide and go!
The hungry and keen on the top are leaping,
The lazy and fat in the depths are sleeping;
Fishing is fine when the pool is muddy,
Broiling is rich when the coals are ruddy! ’—

198

In a monstrous fright, by the murky light,
He looked to the left and he looked to the right,
And what was the vision close before him,
That flung such a sudden stupor o'er him?
'Twas a sight to make the hair uprise,
And the life-blood colder run:
The startled Priest struck both his thighs,
And the abbey clock struck one!

All alone, by the side of the pool,
A tall man sat on a three-legged stool,
Kicking his heels on the dewy sod,
And putting in order his reel and rod;
Red were the rags his shoulders wore,
And a high red cap on his head he bore;
His arms and his legs were long and bare;
And two or three locks of long red hair
Were tossing about his scraggy neck,
Like a tattered flag o'er a splitting wreck.
It might be time, or it might be trouble,
Had bent that stout back nearly double,
Sunk in their deep and hollow sockets
That blazing couple of Congreve rockets,
And shrunk and shrivelled that tawny skin,
Till it hardly covered the bones within.
The line the Abbot saw him throw
Had been fashioned and formed long ages ago,
And the hands that worked his foreign vest

199

Long ages ago had gone to their rest:
You would have sworn, as you looked on them,
He had fished in the flood with Ham and Shem!

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
Minnow or gentle, worm or fly,—
It seemed not such to the Abbot's eye;
Gaily it glittered with jewel and gem,
And its shape was the shape of a diadem.
It was fastened a gleaming hook about
By a chain within and a chain without;
The Fisherman gave it a kick and a spin,
And the water fizzed as it tumbled in!

From the bowels of the earth,
Strange and varied sounds had birth;
Now the battle's bursting peal,
Neigh of steed, and clang of steel;
Now an old man's hollow groan
Echoed from the dungeon stone;
Now the weak and wailing cry
Of a stripling's agony!—
Cold by this was the midnight air;
But the Abbot's blood ran colder.
When he saw a gasping Knight lie there,
With a gash beneath his clotted hair,
And a hump upon his shoulder.

200

And the loyal churchman strove in vain
To mutter a Pater Noster;
For he who writhed in mortal pain
Was camped that night on Bosworth plain—
The cruel Duke of Gloster!

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
It was a haunch of princely size,
Filling with fragrance earth and skies.
The corpulent Abbot knew full well
The swelling form, and the steaming smell;
Never a monk that wore a hood
Could better have guessed the very wood
Where the noble hart had stood at bay,
Weary and wounded, at close of day.

Sounded then the noisy glee
Of a revelling company,—
Sprightly story, wicked jest,
Rated servant, greeted guest,
Flow of wine, and flight of cork,
Stroke of knife, and thrust of fork:
But, where'er the board was spread,
Grace, I ween, was never said!—
Pulling and tugging the Fisherman sat;
And the Priest was ready to vomit,

201

When he hauled out a gentleman, fine and fat,
With a belly as big as a brimming vat,
And a nose as red as a comet.
“A capital stew,” the Fisherman said,
“With cinnamon and sherry!”
And the Abbot turned away his head,
For his brother was lying before him dead,
The Mayor of St. Edmund's Bury!

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
It was a bundle of beautiful things,—
A peacock's tail, and a butterfly's wings,
A scarlet slipper, an auburn curl,
A mantle of silk, and a bracelet of pearl,
And a packet of letters, from whose sweet fold
Such a stream of delicate odours rolled,
That the Abbot fell on his face, and fainted,
And deemed his spirit was half-way sainted.

Sounds seemed dropping from the skies,
Stifled whispers, smothered sighs,
And the breath of vernal gales,
And the voice of nightingales:
But the nightingales were mute,
Envious, when an unseen lute
Shaped the music of its chords
Into passion's thrilling words:

202

“Smile, Lady, smile!—I will not set
Upon my brow the coronet,
Till thou wilt gather roses white
To wear around its gems of light.
Smile, Lady, smile!—I will not see
Rivers and Hastings bend the knee,
Till those bewitching lips of thine
Will bid me rise in bliss from mine.
Smile, Lady, smile!—for who would win
A loveless throne through guilt and sin?
Or who would reign o'er vale and hill,
If woman's heart were rebel still?”

One jerk, and there a lady lay,
A lady wondrous fair;
But the rose of her lip had faded away,
And her cheek was as white and as cold as clay,
And torn was her raven hair.
“Ah ha!” said the Fisher, in merry guise,
“Her gallant was hooked before;”
And the Abbot heaved some piteous sighs,
For oft he had blessed those deep blue eyes,
The eyes of Mistress Shore!

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
Many the cunning sportsman tried,
Many he flung with a frown aside;

203

A minstrel's harp, and a miser's chest.
A hermit's cowl, and a baron's crest,
Jewels of lustre, robes of price,
Tomes of heresy, loaded dice,
And golden cups of the brightest wine
That ever was pressed from the Burgundy vine.
There was a perfume of sulphur and nitre.
As he came at last to a bishop's mitre!

From top to toe the Abbot shook,
As the Fisherman armed his golden hook
And awfully were his features wrought
By some dark dream or wakened thought.
Look how the fearful felon gazes
On the scaffold his country's vengeance raises,
When the lips are cracked and the jaws are dry
With the thirst which only in death shall die:
Mark the mariner's frenzied frown
As the swaling wherry settles down,
When peril has numbed the sense and will,
Though the hand and the foot may struggle still:
Wilder far was the Abbot's glance,
Deeper far was the Abbot's trance:
Fixed as a monument, still as air,
He bent no knee, and he breathed no prayer;
But he signed—he knew not why or how,—
The sign of the Cross on his clammy brow.

204

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he stalked away with his iron box.
“O ho! O ho!
The cock doth crow;
It is time for the Fisher to rise and go.
Fair luck to the Abbot, fair luck to the shrine!
He hath gnawed in twain my choicest line;
Let him swim to the north, let him swim to the south
The Abbot will carry my hook in his mouth!”

The Abbot had preached for many years
With as clear articulation
As ever was heard in the House of Peers
Against Emancipation;
His words had made battalions quake,
Had roused the zeal of martyrs,
Had kept the Court an hour awake,
And the King himself three quarters:
But ever from that hour, 'tis said,
He stammered and he stuttered,
As if an axe went through his head
With every word he uttered.
He stuttered o'er blessing, he stuttered o'er ban,
He stuttered, drunk or dry;
And none but he and the Fisherman
Could tell the reason why!

University of Virginia Library

TALES.

LILLIAN.

A FAIRY TALE.

CANTO I.

CANTO II.

GOG.

CANTO I.

CANTO II.

THE TROUBADOUR.

CANTO I.

CANTO II.

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

THE LEGEND OF THE HAUNTED TREE.

THE LEGEND OF THE DRACHENFELS.

L'ENVOI.

I

II

III

IV

THE BRIDAL OF BELMONT.

A LEGEND OF THE RHINE.

THE LEGEND OF THE TEUFEL-HAUS.

THE RED FISHERMAN,

OR THE DEVIL'S DECOY.

CANTO III.
[_]

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