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 accursed, 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 cup,
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 minstrel's story :
Unmoved by fearful accidents,

All hardships stoutly spurning,
I laughed to scorn the elements---
And 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 its 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 eye-ball glistened,
And his cheek grew pale as he lay and listened,
For he thought, or he dreamed, 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;

Yet, in the darkness of that dread,

His tongue was parched, and his reason fled;

And he watched as the lamp burned low and

dim,

To see some Phantom, gaunt and grim,
Come, dabbled o'er with blood.

Sir Everard kneeled, and strove to pray;
He prayed for light, and he prayed for day,
Till terror checked his prayer;

And ever I muttered, clear and well,

Click, click," like a tolling bell,

Till, bound by Fancy's magic spell,
Sir Everard fainted there.

And oft, from that remembered night,
Around the taper's flickering light
The wrinkled beldames told,

Sir Everard had knowledge won

Of many a murder darkly done,

Of fearful sights and fearful sounds,

And Ghosts that walk their midnight rounds
In the Tower of Kenneth Hold!

(1822.)