AN OLD CASTLE Whether the traveler is wending his way along the legendhaunted valley of the Rhine, or visiting the hill-towns of Italy, the grey forbidding walls of an old castle will bring to mind many a story of the past. The romance of its countless corridors, the ghost of an old robber baron, perhaps the long forgotten song of a troubadour, will come back to haunt the threshold of his memory. In Kenilworth, Roslyn, Warwick, Chillon or Pergine the verses of the American poet may lend added romance to the grim old ruin. The gray arch crumbles, And totters and tumbles; The bat has built in the banquet hall; In the donjon-keep Sly mosses creep; The ivy has scaled the southern wall. No man-at-arms Sounds quick alarms A-top of the cracked martello tower; The drawbridge-chain Is broken in twain The bridge will neither rise nor lower. Not any manner Of broidered banner Flaunts at a blazoned herald's call. Lilies float In the stagnant moat; And fair they are, and tall. Here, in the old Forgotten springs, Was wassail held by queens and kings; Here at the board Sat clown and lord. 86 An Old Castle Maiden fair and lover bold, The knight with his scars, The priest in his gabardine. Where is she Of the fleur-de-lys, And that true knight who wore her gages? Where are the glances That bred wild fancies In curly heads of my lady's pages? Who, in steel or hose, Held revel here, and made them gay? Where is the laughter That shook the rafter Where is the rafter, by the way? Gone is the roof, And perched aloof Is an owl, like a friar of Orders Gray. (Perhaps 'tis the priest Come back to feast He had ever a tooth for capon, he! And the butler's lost the larder-key!) The doughty lords Sleep the sleep of swords; Dead are the dames and damozels; The king in his crown Hath laid him down, And the Jester with his bells. An Old Castle All is dead here: Poppies are red here, Vines in my lady's chamber grow- Where they clamber Up from the poisonous weeds below. Joy is fled here; Let us hence. 'Tis the end of all— And totters, and tumbles, And Silence sits in the banquet hall. 87 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. |