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 Wilfred, lay like this,
On such an eve, is much amiss;
Our mirth beneath the new May moon
Should echoed be by livelier tune.
What need to thee of mail and crest,
Or 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 cell;
In the dull repose of our changeless life,
I long for passion, I long for strife,
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 dun and solemn wood,
Through sunshine and storm that oak had stood.
Many a loving, laughing sprite,
Tended the branches by day and by night,
And the leaves of its age were as fresh and as green
As the leaves of its early youth had been.
Pure of thought should the mortal be
Who sleeps beneath the Haunted Tree.
That night the Minstrel laid him down
Ere his brow relaxed its sullen 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 every 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
O’er 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;
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?”—