Alas! for that forgotten day
When chivalry was nourished,
When none but friars learned to pray,
And beef and beauty flourished;
And fraud in kings was held accurst,
And falsehood sin was reckoned,
And mighty chargers bore my First,
And fat monks wore my Second!
Oh, then I carried sword and shield,
And casque with flaunting feather,
And earned my spurs in battlefield,
In winter and rough weather;
And polished many a sonnet up
To ladies’ eyes and tresses,
And learned to drain my father’s cup,
And loose my falcon’s jesses.
But dim is now my grandeur’s gleam;
The mongrel mob grows prouder;
And everything is done by steam,
And men are killed by powder:
And now I feel my swift decay,
And give unheeded orders,
And rot in paltry state away,
With Sheriffs and Recorders.
IV.
On the casement frame the wind beat high;
Never a star was in the sky;
All Kenneth Hold was wrapt in gloom,
And Sir Everard slept in the Haunted Room.
I sat and sang beside his bed;
Never a single word I said,
Yet did I scare his slumber;
And a fitful light in his eyeball glistened,
And his cheek grew pale as he lay and listened,
For he thought or dreamt that Fiends and Fays
Were reckoning o’er his fleeting days
And telling out their number.
Was it my Second’s ceaseless tone?
On my Second’s hand he laid his own;
The hand that trembled in his clasp
Was crushed by his convulsive grasp.
Sir Everard did not fear my First;—
He had seen it in shapes that men deem worst,
In many a field and flood;
Yet in the darkness of that dread
His tongue was parched and his reason fled,
And he watched, as the lamp burned low and dim,
To see some Phantom, gaunt and grim,
Come dabbled o’er with blood.
Sir Everard kneeled, and strove to pray;
He prayed for light and he prayed for day,
Till terror checked his prayer;
And ever I muttered, clear and well,
“Click, click,” like a tolling bell,
Till, bound by fancy’s magic spell,
Sir Everard fainted there.
And oft from that remembered night,
Around the taper’s flickering light
The wrinkled beldames told,
Sir Everard had knowledge won
Of many a murder darkly done,
Of fearful sights, and fearful sounds,
And ghosts that walk their midnight rounds
In the tower of Kenneth Hold!
V.
The canvas rattled on the mast
As rose the swelling sail,
And gallantly the vessel past
Before the cheering gale;
And on my First Sir Florice stood,
As the far shore faded now,
And looked upon the lengthening flood
With a pale and pensive brow:—
“When I shall bear thy silken glove
Where the proudest Moslem flee,
My lady love, my lady love,—
O waste one thought on me!”