My casque I dofft to scoop the fount,
Angelica!
With beaded pureness bubbling cool—
It clashed into the purling pool;—
Thy name lay chiseled in the rock,
And underneath—
And then meseemed deep night did block
My steel-chained heart in one huge mount
Foreshadowing death!—
Medoro deep in every rock!
The Moorish name my soul did mock,
Angelica!
V.
No more wild war my veins ensteeps,
Angelica!
No more gay lists flaunt all their guiles!—
White wastes before me miles on miles
With one low, ruby sunset bound—
Thou fleest before,
I follow on: a far off sound
Of oceans gnawing at dark steeps
Swells to a roar.—
'Mid foam thou smil'st: I spurn the ground—
I sink, I swim, waves hiss around—
Oh, could I sink 'neath the profound,
And think of thee no more!
THE HAUNTED ROOM.
Its casements' diamond disks of glass
Stare myriad on a terrace old,
Where urns, unkempt with ragged grass,
Foam o'er with frothy cold.
The snow rounds o'er each stair of stone;
The frozen fount is hooped with pearl;
Down desolate walks, like phantoms lone,
Thin, powd'ry snow-wreaths whirl.
And to each rose-tree's stem that bends
With silver snow-combs, glued with frost,
It seems each summer rosebud sends
Its airy, scentless ghost.
The stiff Elizabethan pile
Chatters with cold thro' all its panes,
And rumbling down each chimney file
The mad wind shakes his reins.
* * * * * * *
Lone in the Northern angle, dim
With immemorial dust, it lay,
Where each gaunt casement's stony rim
Stared lidless to the day.
Drear in the Northern angle, hung
With olden arras dusky, where
Tall, shadowy Tristrams fought and sung
For shadowy Isolds fair.