Chapter V

No more wild war my veins ensteeps,
Angelica!
No more gay lists flaunt all their guiles!--
White wastes before me miles on miles
With one low, ruby sunset bound--
Thou fleest before,
I follow on: a far off sound
Of oceans gnawing at dark steeps
Swells to a roar.--
'Mid foam thou smil'st: I spurn the ground--
I sink, I swim, waves hiss around--
Oh, could I sink 'neath the profound,
And think of thee no more!

THE HAUNTED ROOM.

Its casements' diamond disks of glass
Stare myriad on a terrace old,
Where urns, unkempt with ragged grass,
Foam o'er with frothy cold.
The snow rounds o'er each stair of stone;
The frozen fount is hooped with pearl;
Down desolate walks, like phantoms lone,
Thin, powd'ry snow-wreaths whirl.

And to each rose-tree's stem that bends
With silver snow-combs, glued with frost,
It seems each summer rosebud sends
Its airy, scentless ghost.
The stiff Elizabethan pile
Chatters with cold thro' all its panes,
And rumbling down each chimney file
The mad wind shakes his reins.

* * * * * * *

Lone in the Northern angle, dim
With immemorial dust, it lay,
Where each gaunt casement's stony rim
Stared lidless to the day.
Drear in the Northern angle, hung
With olden arras dusky, where
Tall, shadowy Tristrams fought and sung
For shadowy Isolds fair.

Lies by a dingy cabinet
A tarnished lute upon the floor;
A talon-footed chair is set
Grotesquely by the door.
A carven, testered bedstead stands
With rusty silks draped all about;
And like a moon in murky lands
A mirror glitters out.

Dark in the Northern angle, where
In musty arras eats and clings
The drowsy moth; and frightened there
The wild wind sighs and sings
Adown the roomy flue and takes
And swings the ghostly mirror till
It shrieks and creaks, then pulls and shakes
The curtains with a will.

A starving mouse forever gnaws
Behind a polished panel dark,
And 'long the floor its shadow draws
A poplar in the park.
I have been there when blades of light
Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane;
I have been there at dead of night,
But never will again....

She grew upon my vision as
Heat sucked from the dry summer sod;
In taffetas as green as grass
Silent and faint she trod;
And angry jewels winked and frowned
In serpent coils on neck and wrist,
And 'round her dainty waist was wound
A zone of silver mist.

And icy fair as some bleak land
Her pale, still face stormed o'er with night
Of raven tresses, and her hand
Was beautiful and white.
Before the ebon mirror old
Full tearfully she made her moan,
And then a cock crew far and cold;
I looked and she was gone.

As if had come a sullying breath
And from the limpid mirror passed,
Her presence past, like some near death
Leaving my blood aghast.
Tho' I've been there when blades of light
Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane;
Tho' I've been there at dead of night,
I never will again.

SERENADE.

By the burnished laurel line
Glimmering flows the singing stream;
Oily eddies crease and shine
O'er white pebbles, white as cream.

Richest roses bud or die
All about the splendid park;
Fountains glass a wily eye
Where the fawns browse in the dark.

Amber-belted through the night
Floats the alabaster moon,
Stooping o'er th' acacia white
Where my mandolin I tune.

By the twinkling mere I sing
Where lake lilies stretch pale eyes,
And a bulbul there doth fling
Music at the moon who flies.

With a broken syrinx there,
From enameled beds of buds,
Rises Pan in hoof and hair--
Moonlight his dim sculpture floods.

The pale jessamines have felt
The large passion of her gaze;
See! they part--their glories melt
Round her in a starry haze.

THE MIRROR.

An antique mirror this,
I like it not at all,
In this lonely room where the goblin gloom
Scowls from the arrased wall.

A mystic mirror framed
In ebon, wildly carved;
And the prisoned air in the crevice there
Moans like a man that's starved.

A truthful mirror where,
In the broad, chaste light of day,
From the window's arches, like fairy torches,
Red roses swing and sway.

They blush and bow and gaze,
Proud beauties desolate,
In their tresses cold the sunlight's gold,
In their hearts a jealous hate.

A small green worm that gnaws,
For the nightingale that low
Each eve doth rave, the passionate slave
Of the wild white rose below.

The night-bird wails below;
The stars creep out above;
And the roses soon in the sultry moon
Shall palpitate with love.

The night-bird sobs below;
The roses blow and bloom;
Thro' the diamond panes the moonlight rains
In the dim unholy room.

Ancestors grim that stare
Stiff, starched, and haughty down
From the oaken wall of the noble hall
Put on a sterner frown.

The old, bleak castle clock
Booms midnight overhead,
And the rose is wan and the bird is gone
When walk the shrouded dead.

And grim ancestors gaunt
In smiles and tears faint flit;
By the mirror there they stand and stare,
And weep and sigh to it.

In rare, rich ermine earls
With rapiers jeweled rare,
With a powdered throng of courtiers long
Pass with stiff and stately air.

With diamonds and perfumes
In ruff and golden lace,
Tall ladies pass by the looking-glass,
Each sighing at her face.

An awful mirror this,
I like it not at all,
In this lonely room where the goblin gloom
Scowls from the arrased wall.

THE RIDE.

She rode o'er hill, she rode o'er plain,
She rode by fields of barley,
By morning-glories filled with rain,
And beechen branches gnarly.

She rode o'er plain, she rode o'er hill,
By orchard land and berry;
Her face was buoyant as the rill,
Her eyes and heart were merry,

A bird sang here, a bird sang there,
Then blithely sang together,
Sang sudden greetings every where,
"Good-morrow!" and "good weather!"

The sunlight's laughing radiance
Laughed in her radiant tresses;
The bold breeze set her curls a-dance,
Made red her lips with kisses.

"Why ride ye here, why ride ye there,
Why ride ye here so merry?
The sunlight living in your hair,
And in your cheek the cherry?

"Why ride ye with your sea-green plumes,
Your sea-green silken habit,
By balmy bosks of faint perfumes
Where squats the cunning rabbit?"

"The morning's feet are wrought of gold,
The hunter's horn is jolly;
Sir Richard bold was rich and old,
Was old and melancholy.

"A wife they'd have me to his bed,
And to the kirk they hurried;
But now, gramercy! he is dead,
Perdie! is dead and buried.

"I ride by tree, I ride by rill,
I ride by rye and clover,
For by the kirk beyond the hill
Awaits a better lover."

THE SLEEPER.

She sleeps and dreams; one milk-white, lawny arm
Pillowing her heavy hair, as might cold Night
Meeting her sister Day, with glory warm,
Subside in languor on her bosom's white.

The naked other on the damask cloth,--
White, smooth, and light as the light thistle-down,
Or the pink, fairy, fluffy evening moth
On June-drunk beds of roses red,--lies thrown.

And one sweet cheek, kissed with the enamored moon,
Grown pale with anger at the liberty.
While, dusk in darkness, at the favor shown
The pouting other frowns still envity.

Hangs fall'n in folds the rich, dark covering,
With fretfulness thrust partly from her breast;
As through storm-broken clouds the moon might spring,
From this the orb of one pure bosom prest.

She sleeps; and where the silent moonbeams sink
Thro' diamond panes,--soft as a ghost of snow,--
In wide, white jets, the lion-fur seems to drink
With tawny jaws its wasted, winey glow.

Light-lidded sleep and holy dreams to her,
Unborn of feverish sorrow or of care,
Soft as the gust that makes the arras stir,
Tangling gold moonbeams in her fragrant hair.

A MELODY.

I.

There be Fairies bright of eye,
Who the wild-flowers warders are;
There be Fairies subtlely
Nourished in a blossom's star;
Fairies tripping merrily
Singing in faint echoes far,
Singing fairy melodies
Murmured by the burly bees,
By the wild brown bees.

II.

Well I wot that Fairies be there,--
Fairies, Fairies that at eve
Lurking in a blossom-lair,
In some rose-bud's scented hair
From white beams of starlight weave
Glinting gown and shining shoe.
I have proven sure and true
Fairies be there, fays of dew,
Lying laughing in its spark
Floating in a rose's sark;
Singing fairy melodies,
When asleep the dusty bees
Can not steal their melodies,
Fairy melodies.

THE ELF'S SONG.

I.

Where thronged poppies with globed shields
Of fierce red
Warrior all the harvest fields
Is my bed.
Here I tumble with the bee,
Robber bee of low degree
Gay with dust:
Wit ye of a bracelet bold
Broadly belting him with gold?
It was I who bound it on
When a-gambol on the lawn--
It can never rust.

II.

Where the glow-worm lights his lamp
There am I;
Where within the grasses damp
Crickets cry.
Cheer'ly, cheer'ly in the burne
Where the lins the torrents churn
Into foam,
Leap I on a whisp of broom,--
Cheer'ly, cheer'ly through the gloom,--
All aneath a round-cheeked moon,
Treading on her silver shoon
Lightly o'er the gloam,