That the abbot fell on his face, and fainted, Sounds seemed dropping from the skies, "Smile, lady, smile!-I will not set One jerk, and there a lady lay, A lady wondrous fair; But the rose of her lip had faded away, And her cheek was as white and as cold as clay, And torn was her raven hair. "Ah, ah!" said the fisher, in merry guise, "Her gallant was hooked before;" And the abbot heaved some piteous sighs, For oft he had blessed those deep blue eyes, There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks, As he took forth a bait from his iron box. Many he flung with a frown aside; And golden cups of the brightest wine That ever was pressed from the Burgundy vine; As he came at last to a bishop's mitre! On the scaffold his country's vengeance raises, As the swaling wherry settles down, When peril has numbed the sense and will, Though the hand and the foot may struggle stil! Wilder far was the abbot's glance, Deeper far was the abbot's trance: Fixed as a monument, still as air, He bent no knee, and he breathed no prayer; There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks, "Oh, ho! Oh, ho! The cock doth crow; It is time for the fisher to rise and go. Fair luck to the abbot, fair luck to the shrine! He hath gnawed in twain my choicest line; Let him swim to the north, let him swim to the south, The abbot will carry my hook in his mouth!" The abbot had preached for many years, With as clear articulation As ever was heard in the House of Peers . His words had made battalions quake, He kept the court an hour awake, But ever, from that hour, 'tis said, As if an axe went through his head With every word he uttered. He stuttered o'er blessing, he stuttered o'er ban, He stuttered, drunk or dry; And none but he and the fisherman Could tell the reason why! THE LEGEND OF THE HAUNTED TREE. "DEEP is the bliss of the belted knight, When he kisses at dawn the silken glove,) "Lightly he couches the beaming spear; His mistress sits with her maidens by, Watching the speed of his swift career, With a whispered prayer and a murmured sigh. "Far from me is the gazing throng, The blazoned shield, and the nodding plume; Nothing is mine but a worthless song, A joyless life, and a nameless tomb." "Nay, dearest Wilfrid, lay like this On such an eve is much amiss: Our mirth beneath the new May moon And who, in Beauty's gaudiest bowers, The minstrel turned with a moody look From that sweet scene of guiltless glee; From the old who talked beside the brook, And the young who danced beneath the tree: Coldly he shrank from the gentle maid, From the chiding look and the pleading tone; And he passed from the old elm's hoary shade, And followed the forest path alone. One little sigh, one pettish glance, And the girl comes back to her playmates now, And takes her place in the merry dance, With a slower step and a sadder brow. "My soul is sick," saith the wayward boy, Like the insects which our wise men say In the crevice of the cold rock dwell, Till their shape is the shape of their dungeon's cell ; In the dull repose of our changeless life, I long for passion, I long for strife, As in the calm the mariner sighs For rushing waves and groaning skies. For floating pennon and prancing steed, |