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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Wyndham Towers, by Thomas B. Aldrich
+
+#5 in our series by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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+Wyndham Towers
+
+
+
+by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+
+
+July, 1998  [Etext #1830]
+
+
+
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext of Wyndham Towers, by Thomas B. Aldrich
+
+*****This file should be named wndhm10.txt or wndhmm0.zip******
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+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 Project Gutenberg Etext of Wyndham Towers, by Thomas B. Aldrich
+
+
+
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