Unmoved by fearful accidents, Such things have vanished like a dream; The mongrel mob grows prouder; And every thing is done by steam, And men are killed by powder: I feel, alas! my fame decay; IX. My First's an airy thing, But if, in its first flush My Second come to crush Its young devotion, Weeping and waking, X. On the casement frame the wind beat high, All Kenneth Hold was wrapt in gloom, And Sir Everard slept in the Haunted Room. I sat and sang beside his bed; Never a single word I said, Yet did I scare his slumber; And a fitful light in his eye-ball glisten'd, And telling out their number. Was it my Second's ceaseless tone? On my Second's hand he laid his own: The hand that trembled in his grasp, Was crush'd by his convulsive clasp. Sir Everard did not fear my First; He had seen it in shapes that men deem worst Yet, in the darkness of that dread, His tongue was parch'd, and his reason fled; Come, dabbled o'er with blood. Si. Everard kneel'd, and strove to pray, And ever I mutter'd clear and well And oft, from that remembered night, Sir Everard had knowledge won Of fearful sights and fearful sounds, And Ghosts that walk their midnight rounds In the Tower of Kenneth Hold! (1822.) XI. THE canvas rattled on the mast, As rose the swelling sail; And gallantly the vessel passed And on my First Sir Florice stood, And looked upon the lengthening flood With a pale and pensive brow: My lady love, my lady love, Sir Florice lay in a dungeon cell, But still he struck my Second there, And bade its tones renew Those hours when every hue was fair, And every hope was true: |