VII.

ENIGMA.

IN other days, when hope was bright,
Ye spake to me of love and light,

Of endless spring, and cloudless weather,
And hearts that doted linked together!

But now ye tell another tale ;
That life is brief, and beauty frail,
That joy is dead, and fondness blighted,
And hearts that doted disunited!

Away! ye grieve and ye rejoice
In one unfelt unfeeling voice;
And ye, like every friend below,
Are hollow in your joy and woe!

VIII.

ALAS for that forgotten day

When Chivalry was nourished, When none but friars learned to pray, And beef and beauty flourished, And fraud in kings was held accurst, And falsehood sin was reckoned, And mighty chargers bore my First, And fat monks wore my Second!

Oh then I carried sword and shield,
And casque with flaunting feather
And earned my spurs in battle field,
In winter and rough weather;
And polished many a sonnet up
To ladies' eyes and tresses,

And learned to drain my father's
And loose my falcon's jesses.

How grand was I in olden days!
How gilded o'er with glory!
The happy mark of ladies' praise,

The theme of minstrels' story;

cup,

Unmoved by fearful accidents,

All hardships stoutly spurning, I laughed to scorn the elementsAnd chiefly those of Learning.

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;
I give unheeded orders,
And rot in paltry state away,

With Sheriffs and Recorders.

IX.

My First's an airy thing,
Joying in flowers,
Evermore wandering

In Fancy's bowers; Living on beauteous smiles From eyes that glisten, And telling of Love's wiles To ears that listen.

But if, in its first flush

Of warm emotion, My Second come to crush

Its young devotion, Oh! then it wastes away, Weeping and waking, And, on some sunny day,

Is blest in breaking!

X.

ON the casement frame the wind beat high;
Never a star was in the sky;

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 eyeball glistened,

And his cheek grew pale as he lay and listened,
For he thought or dreamt that Fiends and Fays
Were reckoning o'er his fleeting days

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 crushed by his convulsive clasp.

Sir Everard did not fear my First ;-
He had seen it in shapes that men deem worst,
In many a field and flood;