CHARADE. To ride through mountains, where my First To leave the gates of fair Madrid, To dare the gates of Hades ;And this that gallant Spaniard did, For me and for the ladies. XVII. He talked of daggers and of darts, Of weeping eyes and wounded hearts, He said, though love was kin to grief, He said, though many rued belief, My Whole was all that he had said, He said, my First-whose silent car Yet oh! it was not half so bright, It changed not half so fast; ! But still the lady shook her head, My Whole was all that he had said, And then he set a cypress wreath And drew his rapier from its sheath, And all that he could say. XVIII. UNCOUTH Was I of face and form, I bade the yellow harvest fail, Within my Second's dark recess My rude adorers knelt; 'Twas a fearful place; a pile of stones Stood for its stately door; Its music was of sighs and groans, And the torch light fell on human bones Unburied on the floor! The chieftain, ere his band he led, Came thither with his prayer; The boatman, ere his sail he spread, Watched for an omen there; And ever the shriek rang loud within, And ever the red blood ran, And amid the sin and smoke and din I sate with a changeless, endless grin, Forging my First for Man!. My priests are rotting in their grave, Of all that was divine; My name and my memory pass away, But dawn and dusk of one fair day Are called by mortals mine. |