Chapter III

O treachery! O lust of blood!
Angelica!
That one so fair should be so vile!
No more for me again shall smile
The brows of Beauty! As of old,
With clarion call,
No more shall Battle make me bold!
Or Chivalry fire my soul!... The wood,--
Away from all,
From love and lust,--shall house and hold
My misery!... The dawn breaks cold!
And I lie naked on the wold,
Angelica!

YOLANDA OF THE TOWERS

Old forests belt and bar
Her towering battlements;
And all the west, with crest on crest,
The blue o' the hills indents.

Her garden's terrace cliffs
That soar above a sea
Dreamier and fuller of shadowy color
Than sunset's mystery.

And league on league of coast,
Sand-ribbed of wind and wave,
Rolls dim and far with reef and bar
And many an ocean cave.

The morning,--bright with beams
And sea-winds,--wakes the day;
Its breezy lutes and foamy flutes
Make music on the bay.

The deer are roused from rest;
The sea-birds breast the brine;
And from the steep wild torrents leap
Foaming 'neath rock and vine.

But she, in one tall tower,
High built above the tide,
In her heart a thorn, turns from the morn,
Wan-faced and weary-eyed.

Long, long she looks a-sea,
As one who seeks a sail:
But on her view the empty blue
Beats and her eyelids quail.

She turns and slowly goes
Down from her sea-gray towers,
To walk and weep, like one asleep,
Among the salt-slain flowers.

Until the sun is set,
And crocus heavens, grown cold,
Leave all their light to the new moon's white
And one star's point of gold.

Until a breeze from sea
Sets in, of balm and spice
And streams amid the stars, half-hid,
Thin mists as white as ice.

And then her eyes grow large
With hate or one last hope,
And again she bends her gaze where blends
The sea with heaven's slope.

But naught the night reveals,
The night that seems to weep
And shudder down two stars, that drown
Themselves within the deep.

Then to herself she says,
Softly, "Ah God! to know
No death or shame is his, or blame,
Who brought on me this woe!

"What though I know that Hell
At last will have its own;
It will not heal my soul, I feel,
Though there he wail and moan.

"Could I his carrion see,
On yonder crag's wild crest,
Hung up to rot, a traitor's lot,
My soul might find some rest!"...

And this is she God made
Of sunlight and of flowers
For love and kisses and fond caresses--
Yolanda of the Towers.

_Accolon of Gaul_
]

ERMENGARDE

Queen of the Courts of Love, she sleeps; one arm
Pillowing her raven hair, as Dawn might Night,
Or Day kiss Dusk; or Darkness, starry warm,
Be gathered of her sister, rosy Light.

Pale from the purple of the damask cloth
One hand hangs, as a lily-bloom might, lone
Above a bed of poppies; or a moth
Might softly hover by a rose full-blown.

Heraldic, rich, the costly coverings
Sweep, fall'n in folds, pushed partly from her breast;
As through storm-broken clouds the full moon springs,
From these one orb of her pure bosom pressed.

She sleeps: and where the moteless moonbeams sink
Through blazoned panes--an immaterial snow--
In wide, white jets, the lion-fur seems to drink
With tawny jaws their wasted, winey glow.

Light-lidded sleep and holy dreams are hers,
Untouched of feverish sorrow or of care,
Soft as the wind whose fragrant breathing stirs
The moonbeam-tangled tresses of her hair.

HACKELNBERG

I

When down the Hartz the echoes swarm,
He rides beneath the mountain storm
With mad "halloo!" and wild alarm
Of hound and horn and thunder:
With his hunter, black as night,
Ban-dogs, eyed with lambent light;
And a stag, a spectral white,
Rushes on before, in flight
Glimmering through the boughs and under.

II

Long-howling, crouched in bracken black,
The werewolf shuns his ruinous track,
On every side the forests crack,
And mountain torrents tumble:
And the spirits of the air
Whistling whirl with scattered hair,
Teeth that flash and eyes that glare,
Round him as he gallops there,
In the rain and tempest's rumble.