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 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 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 that 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.

Sir Everard kneel'd, and strove to pray,
He pray'd for light, and he prayed for day,
Till terror check'd his prayer;

And ever I mutter'd clear and well

66

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.)