Chapter XXIII

A spacious chamber there was spread,
And, for his rest, a stately bed;
Fresh rushes on the floor were strewn;
Faint on the arras’d walls were shown
The heroes of some antient story,
Now faded, like their mortal glory.
Another form, as dark as doom,
Stood within that chamber’s gloom,
Unseen by those who entered there.
His cause of dread the page thus said:
“Methought I saw, within that chair,
The baron’s self, my very lord;
I saw it, on a true man’s word:
I saw my lord return’d from far,
Arrayed, as he went forth to war!
He fixed his very eyes on me,
But looked not, as he wont to look.
Yet now no living shape I see,
And know that here he could not be;
For, long since, he these walls forsook:
Yet is it strange such visions pale,
Should o’er my waking sight prevail.”