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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wyndham Towers, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wyndham Towers
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Posting Date: November 23, 2008 [EBook #1830]
+Release Date: July, 1998
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WYNDHAM TOWERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+WYNDHAM TOWERS
+
+By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+
+TO EDWIN BOOTH.
+
+MY DEAR BOOTH:
+
+In offering these verses to you, I beg you to treat them (as you
+have many a time advised a certain lord chamberlain to treat the
+players) not according to their desert.  "Use them after your own
+honor and dignity; the less they deserve, the more merit is in your
+bounty."
+
+These many years your friend and comrade,
+
+T. B. ALDRICH.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The motif of the story embodied in the following poem was crudely
+outlined in a brief sketch printed in an early collection of the
+authors verse, and subsequently cancelled for a purpose not until
+now accomplished.  Wyndham Towers is not to be confused with this
+discarded sketch, the text of which has furnished only a phrase, or
+an indirect suggestion, here and there.  That the writer's method,
+when recasting the poem, was more or less influenced by the poets
+he had been studying--chiefly the dramatists of the Elizabethan
+era--will, he hopes, be obvious.  It was part of his design,
+however far he may have fallen from it, to give his narrative
+something of the atmosphere and color of the period in which the
+action takes place, though the story is supposed to be told at a
+later date.
+
+
+
+
+WYNDHAM TOWERS.
+
+
+     Before you reach the slender, high-arched bridge,
+     Like to a heron with one foot in stream,
+     The hamlet breaks upon you through green boughs--
+     A square stone church within a place of graves
+     Upon the slope; gray houses oddly grouped,
+     With plastered gables set with crossed oak-beams,
+     And roofs of yellow tile and purplish slate.
+     That is The Falcon, with the swinging sign
+     And rustic bench, an ancient hostelry;
+     Those leaden lattices were hung on hinge
+     In good Queen Bess's time, so old it is.
+     On ridge-piece, gable-end, or dove-cot vane,
+     A gilded weathercock at intervals
+     Glimmers--an angel on the wing, most like,
+     Of local workmanship; for since the reign
+     Of pious Edward here have carvers thrived,
+     In saints'-heads skillful and winged cherubim
+     Meet for rich abbeys.  From yon crumbling tower,
+     Whose brickwork base the cunning Romans laid--
+     And now of no use else except to train
+     The ivy of an idle legend on--
+     You see, such lens is this thin Devon air,
+     If it so chance no fog comes rolling in,
+     The Torridge where its branching crystal spreads
+     To join the Taw.  Hard by from a chalk cliff
+     A torrent leaps: not lovelier Sappho was
+     Giving herself all silvery to the sea
+     From that Leucadian rock.  Beneath your feet
+     Lie sand and surf in curving parallels.
+     Off shore, a buoy gleams like a dolphin's back
+     Dripping with brine, and guards a sunken reef
+     Whose sharp incisors have gnawed many a keel;
+     There frets the sea and turns white at the lip,
+     And in ill-weather lets the ledge show fang.
+     A very pleasant nook in Devon, this,
+
+       Upon the height of old was Wyndham Towers,
+     Clinging to rock there, like an eagle's nest,
+     With moat and drawbridge once, and good for siege;
+     Four towers it had to front the diverse winds:
+     Built God knows when, all record being lost,
+     Locked in the memories of forgotten men.
+     In Caesar's day, a pagan temple; next
+     A monastery; then a feudal hold;
+     Later a manor, and at last a ruin.
+     Such knowledge have we of it, vaguely caught
+     Through whispers fallen from tradition's lip.
+     This shattered tower, with crenellated top
+     And loops for archers, alone marks the spot,
+     Looming forlornly--a gigantic harp
+     Whereon the invisible fingers of the wind
+     Its fitful and mysterious dirges play.
+
+       Here dwelt, in the last Tudor's virgin reign,
+     One Richard Wyndham, Knight and Gentleman,
+     (The son of Rawdon, slain near Calais wall
+     When Bloody Mary lost her grip on France,)
+     A lonely wight that no kith had nor kin
+     Save one, a brother--by ill-fortune's spite
+     A brother, since 't were better to have none--
+     Of late not often seen at Wyndham Towers,
+     Where he in sooth but lenten welcome got
+     When to that gate his errant footstep strayed.
+     Yet held he dear those gray majestic walls,
+     Time-stained and crusted with the sea's salt breath;
+     There first his eyes took color of the sea,
+     There did his heart stay when fate drove him thence,
+     And there at last--but that we tell anon.
+     Darrell they named him, for an ancestor
+     Whose bones were whitening in Holy Land,
+     The other Richard; a crusader name,
+     Yet it was Darrell had the lion-heart.
+     No love and little liking served this pair,
+     In look and word unpaired as white and black--
+     Of once rich bough the last unlucky fruit.
+     The one, for straightness like a Norland pine
+     Set on some precipice's perilous edge,
+     Intrepid, handsome, little past blown youth,
+     Of all pure thought and brave deed amorous,
+     Moulded the court's high atmosphere to breathe,
+     Yet liking well the camp's more liberal air--
+     Poet, soldier, courtier, 't was the mode;
+     The other--as a glow-worm to a star--
+     Suspicious, morbid, passionate, self-involved,
+     The soul half eaten out with solitude,
+     Corroded, like a sword-blade left in sheath
+     Asleep and lost to action--in a word,
+     A misanthrope, a miser, a soured man,
+     One fortune loved not and looked at askance.
+     Yet he a pleasant outward semblance had.
+     Say what you will, and paint things as you may,
+     The devil is not black, with horn and hoof,
+     As gossips picture him: he is a person
+     Quite scrupulous of doublet and demeanor,
+     As was this Master Wyndham of The Towers,
+     Now latterly in most unhappy case,
+     Because of matters to be here set forth.
+
+       A thing of not much moment, as life goes,
+     A thing a man with some philosophy
+     Had idly brushed aside, as 't were a gnat
+     That winged itself between him and the light,
+     Had, through the crooked working of his mind,
+     Brought Wyndham to a very grievous pass.
+     Yet 't was a grapestone choked Anacreon
+     And hushed his song.  There is no little thing
+     In nature: in a raindrop's compass lie
+     A planet's elements.  This Wyndham's woe
+     Was one Griselda, daughter to a man
+     Of Bideford, a shipman once, but since
+     Turned soldier; now in white-haired, wrinkled age
+     Sitting beneath the olive, valiant still,
+     With sword on nail above the chimney-shelf
+     In case the Queen should need its edge again.
+     An officer he was, though lowly born.
+     The man aforetime, in the Netherlands
+     And through those ever-famous French campaigns
+     (Marry, in what wars bore he not a hand?)
+     In Rawdon Wyndham's troop of horse had served,
+     And when he fell that day by Calais wall
+     Had from the Frenchmen's pikes his body snatched,
+     And so much saved of him, which was not much,
+     The good knight being dead.  For this deed's sake,
+     That did enlarge itself in sorrow's eye,
+     The widow deemed all guerdon all too small,
+     And held her dear lord's servant and his girl,
+     Born later, when that clash of steel was done,
+     As her own kin, till she herself was laid
+     I' the earth and sainted elsewhere.  The two sons
+     Let cool the friendship: one in foreign parts
+     Did gold and honor seek; at hall stayed one,
+     The heir, and now of old friends negligent:
+     Thus fortune hardens the ignoble heart.
+     Griselda even as a little maid,
+     Demure, but with more crotchets in the brain,
+     I warrant ye, than minutes to the hour,
+     Had this one much misliked; in her child-thought
+     Confused him somehow with those cruel shapes
+     Of iron men that up there at The Towers
+     Quickened her pulse.  For he was gaunt, his face,
+     Mature beyond the logic of his years,
+     Had in it something sinister and grim,
+     Like to the visage pregnant fancy saw
+     Behind the bars of each disused casque
+     In that east chamber where the harness hung
+     And dinted shields of Wyndhams gone to grace--
+     At Poitiers this one, this at Agincourt,
+     That other on the sands of Palestine:
+     A breed of fierce man-slayers, sire and son.
+     Of these seemed Richard, with his steel cross-bow
+     Killing the doves in very wantonness--
+     The gentle doves that to the ramparts came
+     For scattered crumbs, undreamful of all ill.
+     Each well-sent dart that stained a snowy breast
+     Straight to her own white-budding bosom went.
+     Fled were those summers now, and she had passed
+     Out of the child-world of vain fantasy
+     Where many a rainbow castle lay in ruin;
+     But to her mind, like wine-stain to a flask,
+     The old distrust still clung, indelible,
+     Holding her in her maidhood's serious prime
+     Well pleased from his cold eyes to move apart,
+     And in her humble fortunes dwell secure.
+     Indeed, what was she?--a poor soldier's girl,
+     Merely a tenant's daughter.  Times were changed,
+     And life's bright web had sadder colors in 't:
+     That most sweet gentle lady--rest her soul!--
+     Shrunk to an epitaph beside her lord's,
+     And six lines shorter, which was all a shame;
+     Gaunt Richard heir; that other at earth's end,
+     (The younger son that was her sweetheart once,)
+     Fighting the Spaniards, getting slain perchance;
+     And all dear old-time uses quite forgot.
+     Slowly, unnoted, like the creeping rust
+     That spreads insidious, had estrangement come,
+     Until at last, one knew not how it fell,
+     And little cared, if sober truth were said,
+     She and the father no more climbed the hill
+     To Twelfth Night festival or May-day dance,
+     Nor commerce had with any at The Towers.
+     Yet in a formless, misty sort of way
+     The girl had place in Wyndham's mind--the girl,
+     Why, yes, beshrew him! it was even she
+     Whom his soft mother had made favorite of,
+     And well-nigh spoiled, some dozen summers gone.
+
+       Perhaps because dull custom made her tame,
+     Or that she was not comely in the bud,
+     Her sweetness halting like a tardy May
+     That wraps itself in mist, and seems not fair,
+     For this or finer reason undivined,
+     His thought she touched not, and was glad withal
+     When she did note how others took his eye
+     And wore rue after.  Thus was her white peace
+     Undarkened till, it so befell, these two
+     Meeting as they a hundred times had met
+     On hill-path or at crossing of the weir,
+     Her beauty broke on him like some rare flower
+     That was not yesterday.  Ev'n so the Spring
+     Unclasps the girdle of its loveliness
+     Abruptly, in the North here: long the drifts
+     Linger in hollows, long on bough and briar
+     No slight leaf ventures, lest the frost's keen tooth
+     Nip it, and then all suddenly the earth
+     Is nought but scent and bloom.  So unto him
+     Griselda's grace unclosed.  Where lagged his wit
+     That guessed not of the bud that slept in stem,
+     Nor hint had of the flower within the bud?
+     If so much beauty had a tiger been,
+     'T had eaten him!  In all the wave-washed length
+     Of rocky Devon where was found her like
+     For excellence of wedded red and white?
+     Here on that smooth and sunny field, her cheek,
+     The hostile hues of Lancaster and York
+     Did meet, and, blending, make a heavenly truce,
+     This were indeed a rose a king might wear
+     Upon his bosom.  By St. Dunstan, now,
+     Himself would wear it.  Then by seeming chance
+     Crossed he her walks, and stayed her with discourse
+     Devised adroitly; spoke of common things
+     At first--of days when his good mother lived,
+     If 't were to live, to pass long dolorous hours
+     Before his father's effigy in church;
+     Of one who then used often come to hall,
+     Ever at Yule-tide, when the great log flamed
+     In chimney-place, and laugh and jest went round,
+     And maidens strayed beneath the mistletoe,
+     Making believe not see it, so got kissed--
+     Of one that joined not in the morrice-dance,
+     But in her sea-green kirtle stood at gaze,
+     A timid little creature that was scared
+     By dead men's armor.  Nought there suffered change,
+     Those empty shells of valor grew not old,
+     Though something rusty.  Would they fright her now
+     Looked she upon them?  Held she in her mind--
+     'T was Spring and loud the mavis piped outside--
+     The day the Turkish helmet slipped from peg,
+     And clashing on the floor, congealed her blood
+     And sent both hands to terror-smitten eyes,
+     She trembling, ready to yield up the ghost?
+     Right merry was it!  Finally he touched
+     On matters nearer, things she had foreboded
+     And this one time must needs lend hearing to,
+     And end so sorry business ere woe came,
+     Like a true maid and honest, as she was.
+     So, tutoring the tremble on her lip
+     And holding back hot tears, she gave reply
+     With such discretion as straight tied his tongue,
+     Albeit he lacked not boldness in discourse:
+
+       "Indeed, indeed, sir, you speak but in jest!
+     Lightly, not meaning it, in courtier-way.
+     I have heard said that ladies at the Court--
+     I judge them not!--have most forgiving ears,
+     And list right willingly to idle words,
+     Listen and smile and never stain a cheek.
+     Yet not such words your father's son should use
+     With me, my father's daughter.  You forget
+     What should most precious be to memory's heart,
+     Love that dared death; and so, farewell."  Farewell
+     It was in sooth; for after that one time,
+     Though he had fain with passion-breathed vows
+     Besieged that marble citadel her breast,
+     He got no speech of her: she chose her walks;
+     Let only moon and star look on the face
+     That could well risk the candor of the sun;
+     Ran not to lattice at each sound of hoof;
+     By stream or hedge-row plucked no pansies more,
+     Mistrusting Proserpina's cruel fate,
+     Herself up-gathered in Sicilian fields;
+     At chapel--for one needs to chapel go
+     A-Sunday--glanced not either right or left,
+     But with black eyelash wedded to white cheek
+     Knelt there impassive, like the marble girl
+     That at the foot-end of his father's tomb,
+     Inside the chancel where the Wyndhams lay,
+     Through the long years her icy vigil kept.
+
+       As leaves turn into flame at the frost's touch,
+     So Richard's heart on coldness fed its fire,
+     And burned with surfeit of indifference.
+     All flavor and complexion of content
+     Went out of life; what served once served no more.
+     His hound and falcon ceased to pleasure him;
+     He read--some musty folios there were
+     On shelf--but even in brave Froissart's page,
+     Where, God knows, there be wounds enough, no herb
+     Nor potion found he to purge sadness with.
+     The gray dust gathered on the leaf unturned,
+     And then the spider drew his thread across.
+     Certain bright coins that he was used to count
+     With thrill at fingers' ends uncounted lay,
+     Suddenly worthless, like the conjurer's gold
+     That midst the jeers and laughter of the crowd
+     Turns into ashes in the rustic's hand.
+     Soft idleness itself bore now a thorn
+     Two-pronged with meditation and desire.
+     The cold Griselda that would none of him!
+     The fair Griselda!  Not alone by day,
+     With this most solid earth beneath his feet,
+     But in the weird and unsubstantial sphere
+     Of slumber did her beauty hold him thrall.
+     Herself of late he saw not; 't was a wraith
+     He worshipped, a vain shadow.  Thus he pined
+     From dawn to dusk, and then from dusk to dawn,
+     Of that miraculous infection caught
+     From any-colored eyes, so they be sweet.
+     Strange that a man should let a maid's slim foot
+     Stamp on his happiness and quench it quite!
+
+       With what snail-pace the traitor time creeps by
+     When one is out with fortune and undone!
+     how tauntingly upon the dial's plate
+     The shadow's finger points the dismal hour!
+     Thus Wyndham, with hands clasped behind his back,
+     Watching the languid and reluctant sun
+     Fade from the metal disk beside the door.
+     The hours hung heavy up there on the hill,
+     Where life was little various at best
+     And merriment had long since ta'en its flight.
+     Sometimes he sat and conned the flying clouds
+     Till on dusk's bosom nestled her one star,
+     And spoke no word, nor seemed alive at all,
+     But a mere shape and counterfeit of life;
+     Or, urged by some swift hunger for green boughs,
+     Would bid the hound to heel, and disappear
+     Into the forest, with himself communing
+     For lack of gossip.  So do lonely men
+     Make themselves tedious to their tedious selves.
+     Thus passed he once in a white blaze of noon
+     Under his oaks, and muttered as he went:
+
+       "'My father's daughter' and 'your father's son'!
+     Faith, but it was a shrewd and nimble phrase,
+     And left me with no fitting word at tongue.
+     The wench hath wit and matter of her own,
+     And beauty, that doth seldom mate with wit,
+     Nature hath painted her a proper brown--
+     A russet-colored wench that knows her worth.
+     And mincing, too--should have her ruff propt up
+     With supertasses, like a dame at Court,
+     And go in cloth-of-gold.  I'll get a suit
+     Of Genoa velvet, and so take her eye.
+     Has she a heart?  The ladies of Whitehall
+     Are not so skittish, else does Darrell lie
+     Most villainously.  Often hath he said
+     The art of blushing 's a lost art at Court.
+     If so, good riddance!  This one here lets love
+     Play beggar to her prudery, and starve,
+     Feeding him ever on looks turned aside.
+     To be so young, so fair, and wise withal!
+     Lets love starve?  Nay, I think starves merely me.
+     For when was ever woman logical
+     Both day and night-time?  Not since Adam fell!
+     I doubt a lover somewhere.  What shrewd bee
+     Hath buzzed betimes about this clover-top?
+     Belike some scrivener's clerk at Bideford,
+     With long goose-quill and inkhorn at his thigh--
+     Methinks I see the parchment face of him;
+     Or one of those swashbuckler Devon lads
+     That haunt the inn there, with red Spanish gold,
+     Rank scurvy knaves, ripe fruit for gallows-tree;
+     Or else the sexton's son"--here Wyndham laughed,
+     Though not a man of mirth--indeed, a man
+     Of niggard humor; but that sexton's son--
+     Lean as the shadow cast by a church spire,
+     Eyes deep in the sockets, noseless, high cheek-boned,
+     Like nothing in the circle of this earth
+     But a death's-head that from a mural slab
+     Within the chancel leers through sermon-time,
+     Making a mock of poor mortality.
+     The fancy touched him, and he laughed a laugh
+     That from his noonday slumber roused an owl
+     Snug in his oaken hermitage hard by.
+     A very rare conceit--the sexton's son!
+
+       Not he, forsooth; he smacked of churchyard mould
+     And musty odors of moth-eaten palls--
+     A living death, a walking epitaph!
+     No lover that for tingling flesh and blood
+     To rest soft cheek on and change kisses with.
+     Yet lover somewhere; from his sly cocoon
+     Time would unshell him.  In the interim
+     What was to do but wait, and mark who strolled
+     Of evenings up the hill-path and made halt
+     This side the coppice at a certain gate?
+     For by that chance which ever serves ill ends,
+     Within the slanted shadow of The Towers
+     The maid Griselda dwelt.  Her gray scarred sire
+     Had for cloth doublet changed the steel cuirass,
+     The sword for gardener's fork, and so henceforth
+     In the mild autumn and sundown of life,
+     Moving erect among his curves and squares
+     Of lily, rose, and purple flower-de-luce,
+     Set none but harmless squadrons in the field--
+     Save now and then at tavern, where he posed,
+     Tankard in hand and prattling of old days,
+     A white-mustached epitome of wars.
+
+       How runs the proverb touching him who waits?
+     Who waits shall have the world.  Time's heir is he,
+     Be he but patient.  Thus the thing befell
+     Wherefrom grew all this history of woe:
+     Haunting the grounds one night, as his use was
+     Who loved the dark as bats and owlets do,
+     Wyndham got sound of voices in the air
+     That did such strange and goblin changes ring
+     As left him doubtful whence the murmurs came,
+     Now here, now there, as they were winged things--
+     Such trick plays Echo upon hapless wight
+     Chance-caught in lonely places where she dwells,
+     Anon a laugh rang out, melodious,
+     Like the merle's note when its ecstatic heart
+     Is packed with summer-time; then all was still--
+     So still the soul of silence seemed to grieve
+     The loss of that sweet laughter.  In his tracks
+     The man stopped short, and listened.  As he leaned
+     And craned his neck, and peered into the gloom,
+     And would the fabulous hundred eyes were his
+     That Argus in the Grecian legend had,
+     He saw two figures moving through a drift
+     Of moonlight that lay stretched across the lawn:
+     A man's tall shape, a slim shape close at side,
+     Her palm in tender fashion pressed to his,
+     The woven snood about her shoulders fallen,
+     And from the sombre midnight of her hair
+     An ardent face out-looking like a star--
+     As in a vision saw he this, for straight
+     They vanished.  Where those silvery shadows were
+     Was nothing.  Had he dreamed it?  Had he gone
+     Mad with much thinking on her, and so made
+     Ghosts of his own sick fancies?  Like a man
+     Carved out of alabaster and set up
+     Within a woodland, he stood rooted there,
+     Glimmering wanly under pendent boughs.
+     Spell-bound he stood, in very woeful plight,
+     Bewildered; and then presently with shock
+     Of rapid pulses hammering at heart,
+     As mad besiegers hammer at a gate,
+     To life came back, and turned on heel to fly
+     From that accursed spot and all that was,
+     When once more the girl's laugh made rich the night,
+     And melted, and the silence grieved anew.
+     Like lead his feet were, and he needs must halt.
+     Close upon this, but further off, a voice
+     From somewhere--Echo at her trick again!--
+     Took up the rhyme of Sweetheart, sigh no more.
+
+
+          It was with doubt and trembling
+          I whispered in her ear.
+          Go, take her answer, bird-on-bough,
+          That all the world may hear--
+            Sweetheart, sigh no more!
+
+          Sing it, sing it, tawny throat,
+          Upon the wayside tree,
+          How fair she is, how true she is,
+          How dear she is to me--
+            Sweetheart sigh no more!
+
+          Sing it, sing it, tawny throat,
+          And through the summer long
+          The winds among the clover-tops,
+          And brooks, for all their silvery stops,
+          Shall envy you the song--
+            Sweetheart, sigh no more.
+
+
+       'T is said the Malays have an arrow steeped
+     In some strange drug whose subtile properties
+     Are such that if the point but prick the skin
+     Death stays there.  Like to that fell cruel shaft
+     This slender rhyme was.  Through the purple dark
+     Straight home it sped, and into Wyndham's veins
+     Its drop of sudden poison did distill.
+     Now no sound was, save when a dry twig snapped
+     And rustled softly down from branch to branch,
+     Or on its pebbly shoals the meagre brook
+     Made intermittent murmur.  "So, 't is he!"
+     Thus Wyndham breathing thickly, with his eyes
+     Dilating in the darkness, "Darrell--he!
+     I set my springe for other game than this;
+     Of hare or rabbit dreamed I, not of wolf.
+     His frequent visitations have of late
+     Perplexed me; now the riddle reads itself.
+     A proper man, a very proper man!
+     A fellow that burns Trinidado leaf
+     And sends smoke through his nostril like a flue!
+     A fop, a hanger-on of willing skirts--
+     A murrain on him!  Would Elizabeth
+     In some mad freak had clapped him in the Tower--
+     Ay, through the Traitor's Gate.  Would he were dead.
+     Within the year what worthy men have died,
+     Persons of substance, civic ornaments,
+     And here 's this gilt court-butterfly on wing!
+     O thou most potent lightning in the cloud,
+     Prick me this fellow from the face of earth!
+     I would the Moors had got him in Algiers
+     What time he harried them on land and sea,
+     And done their will with scimitar or cord
+     Or flame of fagot, and so made an end;
+     Or that some shot from petronel or bow
+     Had winged him in the folly of his flight.
+     Well had it been if the Inquisitors,
+     With rack and screw, had laid black claw on him!"
+     In days whose chronicle is writ in blood
+     The richest ever flowed in English veins
+     Some foul mischance in this sort might have been;
+     For at dark Fortune's feet had Darrell flung
+     In his youth's flower a daring gauntlet down.
+
+       A beardless stripling, at that solemn hour
+     When, breaking its frail filaments of clay,
+     The mother's spirit soared invisible,
+     The younger son, unhoused as well he knew,
+     Had taken horse by night to London town,
+     With right sore heart and nought else in his scrip
+     But boyish hope to footing find at Court--
+     A page's place, belike, with some great lord,
+     Or some small lord, that other proving shy
+     Of merit that had not yet clipt its shell.
+     Day after day, in weather foul or fair,
+     With lackeys, hucksters, and the commoner sort,
+     At Whitehall and Westminster he stood guard,
+     Reading men's faces with most anxious eye.
+     There the lords swarmed, some waspish and some bland,
+     But none would pause at plucking of the sleeve
+     To hearken to him, and the lad had died
+     On London stones for lack of crust to gnaw
+     But that he caught the age's malady,
+     The something magical that was in air,
+     And made men poets, heroes, demi-gods--
+     Made Shakespeare, Rawleigh, Grenvile, Oxenham,
+     And set them stars in the fore-front of Time.
+     In fine, young Darrell drew of that same air
+     A valiant breath, and shipped with Francis Drake,
+     Of Tavistock, to sail the Spanish seas
+     And teach the heathen manners, with God's aid;
+     And so, among lean Papists and black Moors,
+     He, with the din of battle in his ears,
+     Struck fortune.  Who would tamely bide at home
+     At beck and call of some proud swollen lord
+     Not worth his biscuit, or at Beauty's feet
+     Sit making sonnets, when was work to do
+     Out yonder, sinking Philip's caravels
+     At sea, and then by way of episode
+     Setting quick torch* to pirate-nests ashore?
+
+
+          * Sir Francis Drake called this "singeing the
+          King of Spayne's beard."
+
+
+     Brave sport to singe the beard o' the King of Spain!
+     Brave sport, but in the end dreamed he of home--
+     Of where the trout-brook lisped among the reeds,
+     Of great chalk cliffs and leagues of yellow gorse,
+     Of peaceful lanes, of London's roaring streets,
+     The crowds, the shops, the pageants in Cheapside,
+     And heard the trumpets blaring for the Queen
+     When 't was the wind that whistled in the shrouds
+     Off Cadiz.  Ah, and softer dreams he had
+     Of an unnamed and sweetest mystery,
+     And from the marble of his soul's desire
+     Hewed out the white ideal of his love--
+     A new Pygmalion!  All things drew him home,
+     This mainly.  Foot on English earth once more,
+     Dear earth of England his propitious fame
+     A thorn in none but crooked Envy's side,
+     He went cross-gartered, with a silken rose
+     At golden lovelock, diamond brooch at hat
+     Looping one side up very gallantly,
+     And changed his doublet's color twice a day.
+     Ill fare had given his softer senses edge;
+     Good fortune, later, bade him come to dine,
+     Mild Spenser's scholar, Philip Sidney's friend.
+     So took he now his ease; in Devonshire,
+     When Town was dull, or he had need at heart
+     For sight of Wyndham Towers against the sky;
+     But chiefly did he bask him by the Thames,
+     For there 't was that Young England froze and thawed
+     By turns in GLORIANA'S frown and smile.
+
+       As some wild animal that gets a wound,
+     And prescience hath of death, will drag itself
+     Back to its cavern sullenly to die,
+     And would not have heaven's airs for witnesses,
+     So Wyndham, shrinking from the very stars
+     And tell-tale places where the moonlight fell,
+     Crept through the huddled shadows back to hall,
+     And in a lonely room where no light was,
+     Save what the moon made at the casement there,
+     Sat pondering his hurt, and in the dark
+     Gave audience to a host of grievances.
+     For never comes reflection, gay or grave,
+     But it brings with it comrades of its hue.
+     So did he fall to thinking how his day
+     Declined, and how his narrow life had run
+     Obscurely through an age of great events
+     Such as men never saw, nor will again
+     Until the globe be riven by God's fire.
+     Others had ventured for the Golden Fleece,
+     Knaves of no parts at all, and got renown,
+     (By force of circumstance and not desert,)
+     While he up there on that rock-bastioned coast
+     Had rotted like some old hulk's skeleton,
+     Whose naked and bleached ribs the lazy tide
+     Laps day by day, and no man thinks of more.
+     Then was jade Fortune in her lavish mood.
+     Why had he not for distant Colchis sailed
+     And been the Jason of these Argonauts?
+     True, some had come to block on Tower Hill,
+     Or quittance made in a less noble sort;
+     Still they had lived, from life's high-mantling cup
+     Had blown the bead.  In such case, if one's head
+     Be of its momentary laurel stripped
+     And made a show of stuck on Temple Bar
+     Or at the Southwark end of London Bridge,
+     What mattered it?  At worst man dies but once--
+     So far as known.  One may not master death,
+     But life should be one's lackey.  He had been
+     Time's dupe and bondsman; ever since his birth
+     Had walked this planet with his eye oblique,
+     Grasped what was worthless, what were most dear missed;
+     Missed love and fame, and all the sum of things
+     Fame gets a man in England--the Queen's smile,
+     Which means, when she 's in humor, abbey-lands,
+     Appointments, stars and ribbons for the breast,
+     And that sleek adulation that takes shape
+     I' the down-drooping of obsequious lids
+     When one ascends a stair or walks the pave.
+     Good Lord! but it was excellent to see
+     How Expectation in the ante-room
+     Crooks back to Greatness passing to the Queen--
+     "Kind sir!" "Sweet sir!" "I prithee speed my suit!"
+     'T was somewhat to be flattered, though by fools,
+     For even a fool's coin hath a kind of ring.
+     Yet after all--thus did the grapes turn sour
+     To master Fox, in fable--who would care
+     To moil and toil to gain a little fame,
+     And have each rascal that prowls under heaven
+     Stab one for getting it?  Had he wished power,
+     The thing was in the market-place for sale
+     At stated rates--so much for a man's soul!
+     His was a haughty spirit that bent not,
+     And one to rise had need to cringe and creep.
+     So had his brother into favor crawled,
+     Like slug into the bosom of a rose,
+     And battened in the sun.  At thought of him,
+     Forgotten for a moment, Wyndham winced,
+     And felt his wound.  "Why bides he not in Town
+     With his blond lovelock and wench-luring ways--
+     There runs his fox!  What foul fiend sends him here
+     To Wyndham Towers?  Is there not space enough
+     In this our England he needs crowd me so?
+     Has London sack upon his palate staled,
+     That he must come to sip my Devon cream?
+     Are all maids shut in nunneries save this one?
+     What magic philtre hath he given her
+     To thaw the ice that melted not for me?
+     Rich is he now that at his setting forth
+     Had not two silver pieces to his purse.
+     It is his brave apparel dazzles her.
+     Thus puts he bound and barrier to my love.
+     Another man were he abused as I...
+     I'll have no more of him!  If I but dared--
+     Nay, I dare not.  I have fawn's blood, I think;
+     I would, and dare not!"  Thrice the hooded clock
+     Solemnly, like some old Carthusian monk
+     With meagre face half seen beneath his cowl,
+     Intoned the quarter.  Memory went not back
+     When this was not a most familiar sound,
+     Yet as each stroke on the dead silence fell
+     Wyndham turned, startled.  Now the sanguine moon,
+     To clouded opal changing momently,
+     Rose sheer above the pine-trees' ragged edge,
+     And through the wide-flung casement reaching hand
+     With cold and spectral finger touched the plates
+     Of his dead father's armor till it gleamed
+     One mass of silver.  There it stood complete,
+     That august panoply which once struck dread
+     To foemen on the sunny plains of France,
+     Menacing, terrible, this instant stood,
+     With vizard down and jousting-lance at charge
+     As if that crumbled knight were quick within.
+
+       A footfall on the shingle walk below
+     Grated, a footfall light as Mercury's
+     Disdaining earth, and Wyndham in the dark,
+     Half crouched upon the settle with his nails
+     Indenting the soft wood-work, held his breath.
+     Then suddenly a blind rage like a flame
+     Swept over him and hurled him to his feet--
+     Such rage as must have seized the soul of Cain
+     Meeting his brother in the stubble-field.
+     Anon came one that hummed a blithe sea-song,
+     As he were fresh from tavern and brave cheer,
+     And held the stars that blinked there in the blue
+     Boon comrades.  Singing in high-hearted way,
+     His true-love's kiss a memory on his lip,
+     Straight on he came to unrenowned end
+     Whose dream had been in good chain-mail to die
+     On some well-foughten field, at set of sun,
+     With glorious peal of trumpets on his ear
+     Proclaiming victory.  So had he dreamed.
+     And there, within an arch at the stair-top
+     And screened behind a painted hanging-cloth
+     Of coiled gold serpents ready to make spring,
+     Ignoble Death stood, his convulsive hand
+     Grasping a rapier part-way down the blade
+     To deal the blow with deadly-jewelled hilt--
+     Black Death, turned white with horror of himself.
+     Straight on came he that sang the blithe sea-song;
+     And now his step was on the stair, and now
+     He neared the blazoned hanging-cloth, and now...
+
+       The lights were out, and all life lay in trance
+     On floor or pallet, blanketed to chin,
+     Each in his mask of sullen-seeming death--
+     Fond souls that recked not what was in the air,
+     Else had the dead man's scabbard as it clashed
+     Against the balustrade, then on the tiles,
+     Brought awkward witness.  One base hind there was
+     Had stolen a venison-pasty on the shelf,
+     And now did penance; him the fall half roused
+     From dreadful nightmare; once he turned and gasped,
+     Then straightway snored again.  No other sound
+     Within the dream-enchanted house was heard,
+     Save that the mastiff, lying at the gate
+     With visionary bone, snarled in his sleep.
+     Secret as bridal-kiss may murder be,
+
+       Done was the deed that could not be undone
+     Throughout eternity.  O silent tongue
+     That would blab all with silence!  What to do?
+     How hide this speechless witness from men's gaze?
+     Living, that body vexed us; being dead
+     'T is like to give us trouble and to spare.
+     O for a cavern in deep-bowelled earth!
+     Quick, ere the dusky petals of the night
+     Unclosing bare the fiery heart of dawn
+     And thus undo us with its garish light,
+     Let us this mute and pale accusing clay
+     In some undreamed-of sepulchre bestow,
+     But where?  Hold back thy fleet-wing'd coursers, Time,
+     Whilst we bethink us!  Ah--such place there is!
+     Close, too, at hand--a place wherein a man
+     Might lie till doomsday safer from the touch
+     Of prying clown than is the spiced dust
+     Of an Egyptian in his pyramid.
+
+       At a dark alcove's end of that long hall,
+     The ancient armor-room in the east wing,
+     A certain door (whereof no mortal knew
+     save Wyndham, now that other lay a-cold)
+     Was to the panels of the wall so set,
+     And with such devilish shrewdness overlaid
+     By carvings of wild-flower and curled grape-leaf,
+     That one not in the favor of the trick,
+     Albeit he knew such mechanism was,
+     Ere he put finger on the secret spring
+     Had need of Job for ancestor, in faith!
+     You pressed a rose, a least suspected rose,
+     And two doors turned on hinge, the inner door
+     Closing a space of say some six feet square,
+     Unlighted, sheathed with iron.  Doubtless here
+     The mediaeval Wyndhams hid their plate
+     When things looked wicked from the outer wall,
+     Or, on occasion, a grim ruthless lord
+     Immured some inconvenient two-faced friend--
+     To banquet bidden, and kept over night.
+     Such pranks were played in Merrie England then.
+     Sealed in the narrow compass of that cell,
+     Shut from God's light and his most precious air,
+     A man might have of life a half-hour's lease
+     If he were hale and well-breathed at the start.
+
+       Hither did Richard bear his brother's corse
+     And fling it down.  Upon the stone-paved floor
+     In a thin strip of moonlight flung it down,
+     And then drew breath.  Perhaps he paused to glance
+     At the white face there, with the strange half-smile
+     Out-living death, the brightness of the hair
+     Lying in loops and tangles round the brow--
+     A seraph's face of silver set in gold,
+     Such as the deft Italians know to carve;
+     Perhaps his tiger's blood cooled then, perhaps
+     Swift pity at his very heart-strings tugged,
+     And he in that black moment of remorse,
+     Seeing how there his nobler self lay slain,
+     Had bartered all this jewel-studded earth
+     To win life's color back to that wan cheek.
+     Ah, let us hope it, and some mercy feel,
+     Since each at compt shall need of mercy have.
+     Now how it happened, whether 't was the wind,
+     Or whether 't was some incorporeal hand
+     That reached down through the dark and did the thing,
+     Man knoweth not, but suddenly both doors,
+     Ere one could utter cry or put forth arm,
+     Closed with dull clang, and there in his own trap
+     Incontinent was red-stained Richard caught,
+     And as by flash of lightning saw his doom.
+     Call, an thou wilt, but every ear is stuffed
+     With slumber!  Shriek, and run quick frenzied hands
+     Along the iron sheathing of thy grave--
+     For 't is thy grave--no egress shalt thou find,
+     No lock to break, no subtile-sliding bolt,
+     No careless rivet, no half loosened plate
+     For dagger's point to fret at and pry off
+     And let a stifling mortal get to air!
+
+       Angels of Light! what were a thousand years
+     Of rankling envy and contemned love
+     And all the bitter draughts a man may drink
+     To that half hour of Richard's with his Dead?
+
+       Through silence, gloom, and star-strown paths of Night
+     The breathless hours like phantoms stole away.
+     Black lay the earth, in primal blackness wrapt
+     Ere the great miracle once more was wrought.
+     A chill wind freshened in the pallid East
+     And brought sea-smell of newly blossomed foam,
+     And stirred the leaves and branch-hung nests of birds.
+     Fainter the glow-worm's lantern glimmered now
+     In the marsh land and on the forest's hem,
+     And the slow dawn with purple laced the sky
+     Where sky and sea lay sharply edge to edge.
+     The purple melted, changed to violet,
+     And that to every delicate sea-shell tinge,
+     Blush-pink, deep cinnabar; then no change was,
+     Save that the air had in it sense of wings,
+     Till suddenly the heavens were all aflame,
+     And it was morning.  O great miracle!
+     O radiance and splendor of the Throne,
+     Daily vouchsafed to us!  Yet saith the fool,
+     "There is no God!"  And now a level gleam,
+     Thrust like a spear-head through the tangled boughs,
+     Smote Wyndham's turrets, and the spell was broke.
+
+       And one by one, on pallet stretched or floor,
+     The sleepers wakened; each took up afresh
+     His load of life; but two there were woke not,
+     Nor knew 't was daybreak.  From the rusty nail
+     The gateman snatched his bunch of ancient keys,
+     And, yawning, vowed the sun an hour too soon;
+     The scullion, with face shining like his pans,
+     Hose down at heel and jerkin half unlaced,
+     On hearthstone knelt to coax the smouldering log;
+     The keeper fetched the yelping hounds their meat;
+     The hostler whistled in the stalls; anon,
+     With rustling skirt and slumber-freshened cheek,
+     The kerchief'd housemaid tripped from room to room
+     (Sweet Gillian, she that broke the groom his heart),
+     While, wroth within, behind a high-backed chair
+     The withered butler for his master waited,
+     Cursing the cook.  That day the brewis spoiled.
+
+       That day came neither kinsman to break bread.
+     When it was seen that both had lain abroad,
+     The wolf-skins of their couches made that plain
+     As pike-staff, or the mole on Gillian's cheek,
+     The servants stared.  Some journey called them hence;
+     At dead of night some messenger had come
+     Of secret import, may be from the Queen,
+     And they paused not for change of raiment even.
+     And yet, in faith, that were but little like;
+     Sir Richard had scant dealings with the Court.
+     Still--if Northumberland were in arms again.
+     'T was passing strange.  No beast had gone from rack.
+     How had they gone, then?  Who looked on them last?
+     Up rose the withered butler, he it was:
+     They supped together, of no journey spoke,
+     Spoke little, 't was their custom; after meal
+     The master's brother sallied forth alone,
+     The master stayed within.  "That did he not,"
+     Quoth one, "I saw Sir Richard in the close
+     I' the moonrise."  "'T was eleven on the stroke,"
+     Said Gillian softly, "he, or 't was his ghost--
+     Methought his face was whiter than my smock--
+     Passed through the courtyard, and so into house.
+     Yet slept he not there!"  And that other one,
+     The guest unwelcome, kinsman little loved
+     (How these shrewd varlets turn us inside out
+     At kitchen-conclaves, over our own wine!)
+     Him had no eye seen since he issued forth
+     As curfew sounded. "Call me lying knave"--
+     He of the venison-pasty had the word--
+     "And let me nevermore dip beak in ale
+     Or sit at trencher with good smoking meat,
+     If I heard not, in middle of the night,
+     The cock crow thrice, and took it for a sign."
+     "So, marry, 't was--that thou wert drunk again."
+     But no one laughed save he that made the jest,
+     Which often happens.  The long hours wore on,
+     And gloaming fell.  Then came another day,
+     And then another, until seven dawns
+     In Time's slow crucible ran ruddy gold
+     And overflowed the gray horizon's edge;
+     And yet no hosts at table--an ill thing!
+     And now 't was on the eve of Michaelmas.
+
+       What could it mean?  From out their lethargy
+     At last awaking, searchers in hot haste,
+     Some in the saddle, some afoot with hounds,
+     Scoured moor and woodland, dragged the neighboring weirs
+     And salmon-streams, and watched the wily hawk
+     Slip from his azure ambush overhead,
+     With ever a keen eye for carrion:
+     But no man found, nor aught that once was man.
+     By land they went not; went they water-ways?
+     Might be, from Bideford or Ilfracombe.
+     Mayhap they were in London, who could tell?
+     God help us! do men melt into the air?
+     Yet one there was whose dumb unlanguaged love
+     Had all revealed, had they but given heed.
+     Across the threshold of the armor-room
+     The savage mastiff stretched himself, and starved.
+
+       Now where lags he, upon what alehouse bench
+     'Twixt here and London, who shall lift this weight?
+     Were he not slain upon the Queen's highway
+     Ere he reached Town, or tumbled into ford
+     With too much sack-and-sugar under belt,
+     Then was his face set homeward this same hour,
+     Why lingers he?  Ill news, 't is said, flies fast,
+     And good news creeps; then his must needs be good
+     That lets the tortoise pass him on the road.
+     Ride, Dawkins, ride! by flashing tarn and fen
+     And haunted hollow!  Look not where in chains
+     On Hounslow heath the malefactor hangs,
+     A lasting terror!  Give thy roan jade spur,
+     And spare her not!  All Devon waits for thee,
+     Thou, for the moment, most important man!
+     A sevennight later, when the rider sent
+     To Town drew rein before The Falcon inn
+     Under the creaking of the windy sign,
+     And slipped from saddle with most valorous call
+     For beer to wash his throat out, then confessed
+     He brought no scrap of any honest news,
+     The last hope died, and so the quest was done.
+     "They far'd afoot," quoth one, "but where God wot."
+
+       The blackthorn bloomed anew, and the long grass
+     Was starred with flowers that once Griselda prized,
+     But plucked not.  She, poor wench, from moon to moon
+     Waxed pale and paler: of no known disease,
+     The village-leech averred, with lips pursed out
+     And cane at chin; some inward fire, he thought,
+     Consumed.  A dark inexplicable blight
+     Had touched her, thinned her, till of that sweet earth
+     Scarce more was left than would have served to grow
+     A lily.  Later, at a fresh-turned grave,
+     From out the maiden strewments, as it were,
+     A whisper rose, of most pathetic breath,
+     Of how one maid had been by two men loved--
+     No names, God's mercy!--and that neither man
+     Would wed her: why?--conjecture faltered there,
+     For whiter was she than new-drifted snow,
+     Or bleached lamb's wool, or any purest thing,
+     Such stuff in sooth as Heaven shapes angels of;
+     And how from their warm, comfortable beds
+     These two men wandered out into the night,
+     Sore stricken and distempered in their mind,
+     And being by Satan blinded and urged on
+     Did fling them headlong from a certain crag
+     That up Clovelly way o'erhangs the sea--
+     O'erhangs the sea to tempt unhappy folk.
+     From door to door the piteous legend passed,
+     And like a thrifty beggar took from each.
+     And when the long autumnal season came
+     To that bleak, bitter coast, and when at night
+     The deep was shaken, and the pent cloud broke
+     Crashing among the lurid hills of heaven,
+     And in brief sudden swoonings of the gale
+     Contentious voices rose from the sand-dunes,
+     Then to low sobs and murmurs died away,
+     The fishwives, with their lean and sallow cheeks
+     Lit by the flickering driftwood's ruddy glow,
+     Drew closer to the crane, and under breath
+     To awestruck maidens told the fearful tale.
+
+       The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
+     'T was said that once the Queen reached out her hand--
+     This was at Richmond in her palace there--
+     And let it rest on Burleigh's velvet sleeve,
+     And spoke--right stately was she in her rouge:
+     "Prithee, good Master Cecil, tell us now
+     Was 't ever known what ill befell those men,
+     Those Wyndhams?  Were they never, never found?
+     Look you, 't will be three years come Michaelmas:
+     'T were well to have at least the bones of them.
+     'Fore God, sir! this is something should be seen!
+     When the Armada, which God smote and sunk,
+     Threatened our Realm, our buckler and our shield
+     Were such stout hearts as that young Wyndham was.
+     The elder brother--well, Heaven fashioned him.
+     Our subjects are our subjects, mark you that.
+     Not found, forsooth!  Why, then, they should be found!"
+     Fain had my good Lord Burleigh solved the thing,
+     And smoothed that ominous wrinkle on the brow
+     Of her Most Sweet Imperious Majesty.
+     Full many a problem his statecraft had solved--
+     How strangle treason, how soothe turbulent peers,
+     How foil the Pope and Spain, how pay the Fleet--
+     Mere temporal matters; but this business smelt
+     Strongly of brimstone.  Bring back vanished folk!
+     That could not Master Cecil an he would.
+
+       The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
+     Dark were the days that came to Wyndham Towers
+     With that grim secret rusting in its heart.
+     On the sea's side along the fissured wall
+     The lichen spread in patches of dull gold
+     Up to the battlements, at times assailed
+     By sheeted ghosts of mist blown from the sea,
+     Now by the whistling arrows of the sleet
+     Pelted, and thrice of lightning scorched and seamed,
+     But stoutly held from dreary year to year
+     By legions of most venerable rooks,
+     Shrill black-robed prelates of the fighting sort.
+     In the wide moat, run dry with summer droughts
+     Great scarlet poppies lay in drifts and heaps,
+     Like bodies fall'n there in some vain assault.
+     Within, decay and dolor had their court--
+     Dolor, decay, and silence, lords of all.
+     From room to room the wind went shuddering
+     On some vague endless quest; now pausing here
+     To lift an arras, and then hurrying on,
+     To some fresh clue, belike!  The sharp-nosed mouse
+     Through joist and floor discreetly gnawed her way,
+     And for her glossy young a lodging made
+     In a cracked corselet that once held a heart.
+     The meditative spider undisturbed
+     Wove his gray tapestry from sill to sill.
+     Over the transom the stone eagle drooped,
+     With one wing gone, in most dejected state
+     Moulting his feathers.  A blue poisonous vine,
+     Whose lucent berry, hard as Indian jade,
+     No squirrel tried his tooth on, June by June
+     On the south hill-slope festered in the sun.
+     Man's foot came not there.  It was haunted ground.
+
+       The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
+     An oak stood where an acorn tumbled once,
+     Ages ago, and all the world was strange.
+     Now, in that year King Charles the Second left
+     Forever the soft arms of Mistress Gwynn
+     And wrapt him in that marble where he lies,
+     The moulder'd pile with its entombed Crime
+     Passed to the keep of a brave new-fledged lord,
+     Who, liking much the sane and wholesome air
+     That bent the boughs and fanned the turret's top,
+     Cried, "Here dwell I!"  So fell it on a day
+     The stroke of mallets and the screech of saws
+     In those bleak chambers made such din as stopped
+     The careful spider half-way up his thread,
+     And panic sent to myriad furtive things
+     That dwelt in wainscots and loved not the sun.
+     Vainly in broken phalanx clamorous
+     Did the scared rooks protest, and all in vain
+     The moths on indolent white damask wings
+     At door and casement rallied.   Wyndham Towers
+     Should have a bride, and ghosts had word to quit.
+
+       And now, behold what strange thing came to pass.
+     A certain workman, in the eastern wing
+     Plying his craft alone as the day waned--
+     One Gregory Nokes, a very honest soul,
+     By trade wood-carver--stumbled on a door
+     Leading to nowhere at an alcove's end,
+     A double door that of itself swung back
+     In such strange way as no man ever saw;
+     And there, within a closet, on the flags
+     Were two grim shapes which, vaguely seen at first
+     In the half light, grew presently distinct--
+     Two gnomes or vampires seemed they, or dire imps
+     Straight from the Pit, in guise fantastical
+     Of hose and doublet: one stretched out full length
+     Supine, and one in terror-stricken sort
+     Half toppled forward on the bended knee,
+     Grasping with vise-like grip the other's wrist,
+     As who should say, Arouse thee, sleep no more!
+     But said it not.  If they were quick or dead,
+     No sign they gave beyond this sad dumb show.
+     Blurred one face was, yet luminous, like the moon
+     Caught in the fleecy network of a cloud,
+     Or seen glassed on the surface of a tarn
+     When the wind crinkles it and makes all dim;
+     The other, drawn and wrenched by mortal throes,
+     And in the aspect such beseeching look
+     As might befall some poor wretch called to compt
+     On the sudden, even as he kneels at prayer,
+     With Mercy! turned to frost upon the lip.
+
+       Thus much saw Nokes within the closet there
+     Ere he drew breath; then backing step by step,
+     The chisel clutched in still uplifted hand,
+     His eyes still fixed upon the ghosts, he reached
+     An open window giving on the court
+     Where the stone-cutters were; to them he called
+     Softly, in whispers under his curved palm,
+     Lest peradventure a loud word should rouse
+     The phantoms; but ere foot could climb the stair,
+     Or the heart's pulses count the sum of ten,
+     Through both dread shapes, as at God's finger-touch,
+     A shiver ran, the wavering outlines broke,
+     And suddenly a chill and mist-like breath
+     Touched Nokes's cheek as he at casement leaned,
+     And nought was left of that most piteous pair
+     Save two long rapiers of some foreign make
+     Lying there crossed, a mass of flaky rust.
+
+       O luckless carver of dead images,
+     Saint's-head or gargoyle, thou hast seen a sight
+     Shall last thee to the confines of the grave!
+     Ill were thy stars or ever thou wert born
+     That thou shouldst look upon a thing forbid!
+     Now in thine eye shall it forever live,
+     And the waste solitudes of night inhabit
+     With direful shadows of the nether world,
+     Yet leave thee lonely in the throng of men--
+     Not of them, thou, but creature set apart
+     Under a ban, and doomed henceforth to know
+     The wise man's scorn, the dull man's sorry jest.
+     For who could credence give to that mad tale
+     Of churchyard folk appearing in broad day,
+     And drifting out at casement like a mist?
+     Marry, not they who crowded up the stair
+     In haste, and peered into that empty cell,
+     And had half mind to buffet Master Nokes,
+     Standing with finger laid across his palm
+     In argumentative, appealing way,
+     Distraught, of countenance most woe-begone.
+     "See!--the two swords.  As I 'm a Christian soul!"
+     "Odds, man!" cried one, "thou 'st been a-dreamin', man.
+     Cleave to thy beer, an' let strong drink alone!"
+
+       So runs the legend.  So from their long sleep
+     Those ghosts arose and fled into the night.
+     But never bride came to that dark abode,
+     For wild flames swept it ere a month was gone,
+     And nothing spared but that forlorn old tower
+     Whereon the invisible fingers of the wind
+     Its fitful and mysterious dirges play.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wyndham Towers, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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