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VII.

He talked of daggers and of darts,

Of passions and of pains,

Of weeping eyes and wounded hearts,
Of kisses and of chains;

He said, though love was kin to grief,
He was not born to grieve;
He said, though many rued belief,
She safely might believe;

But still the lady shook her head,
And swore, by yea and nay,
My Whole was all that he had said,
And all that he could say.

He said, my First-whose silent car
Was slowly wandering by,
Veiled in a vapor faint and far

Though the unfathomed sky--
Was like the smile whose rosy light
Across her young lips passed,
Yet oh! it was not half so bright,
It changed not half so fast;
But still the lady shook her head,
And swore, by yea and nay,
My Whole was all that he had said,
And all that he could say.

And then he set a cypress wreath

Upon his raven hair,

And drew his rapier from its sheath,

Which made the lady stare;

And said, his life-blood's purple flow
My second there should dim,

If she he loved and worshipped so
Would only weep for him;
But still the lady shook her head,
And swore by yea and nay,

My Whole was all that he had said,
And all that he could say.

VIII.

My First came forth in booted state,

For fair Valencia bound;

And smiled to feel my Second's weight, And hear its creaking sound.

"And here's a goaler sweet," quoth he, "You cannot bribe or cozen;

To keep one ward in custody
Wise men will forge a dozen."

But daybreak saw a lady guide
My Whole across the plain,
With a handsome cavalier beside,
To hold her bridle-rein:

And "blessings on the bonds," quoth he,

"Which wrinkled age imposes,

If woman must a prisoner be,

Her chain should be of roses."

IX.

I graced Don Pedro's revelry,
All dressed in fire and feather,
When loveliness and chivalry,

Were met to feast together.

He flung the slave who moved the lid,
A purse of maravedis ;

And this that gallant Spaniard did,
For me and for the ladies.

He vowed a vow, that noble knight,
Before he went to table,

To make his only sport the fight,
His only couch the stable,

Till he had dragged as he was bid
Five score of Turks to Cadiz ;—
And this that gallant Spaniard did,
For me and for the ladies.

To ride through mountains, where my First
A banquet would be reckoned;
Through deserts, where to quench their thirst
Men vainly turn my Second.

To leave the gates of fair Madrid,
And dare the gates of Hades;-
And this that gallant Spaniard did,
For me and for the ladies.

X.

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 on 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:

cup,

But dim is now my grandeur's gleam;
The mongrel mob grows prouder;
And everything is done by steam,
And men are killed by powder.
And now I feel my swift decay,
And give unheeded orders,
And rot in paltry state away,

With sheriffs and recorders.

XI.

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 glisten'd,
And his cheek grew pale as he lay and listen'd,
For he thought, or he dream'd, 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 crush'd 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 his dread,

His tongue was parch'd, and his reason fled;
And he watch'd as the lamp burned low and dim,

To see some Phantom gaunt and grim

Come, dabbled o'er with blood.

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