XXXVIII "My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride! Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest? Thy beauty's shield, heart-shap'd and vermeil dyed? Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest After so many hours of toil and quest, A famish'd pilgrim, saved by miracle. Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think'st well To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel. XXXIX "Hark! 'tis an elfin-storm from faery land, For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee." XL She hurried at his words, beset with fears, The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound, Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar; And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. XLI They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall; The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide, By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide: The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans. XLII And they are gone: ay, ages long ago These lovers fled away into the storm. That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe, And all his warrior-guests with shade and form Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm, Were long be-nightmar'd. Angela the old Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform; The Beadsman, after thousand aves told, For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold. JOHN KEATS. THE SCHOLAR GIPSY Go, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill; And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest, green, Come, Shepherd, and again renew the quest. Here, where the reaper was at work of late, Here will I sit and wait, While to my ear from uplands far away The bleating of the folded flocks is borne; All the live murmur of a summer's day. Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field, And here till sun-down, Shepherd, will I be. Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep: And air-swept lindens yield Their scent, and rustle down their perfum'd showers And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book The story of that Oxford scholar poor Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain, Who, tir'd of knocking at Preferment's door, One summer morn forsook His friends, and went to learn the Gipsy lore, And roam'd the world with that wild brotherhood, And came, as most men deem'd, to little good, But came to Oxford and his friends no more. But once, years after, in the country lanes, And they can bind them to what thoughts they will: "And I," he said, "the secret of their art, When fully learn'd, will to the world impart: But it needs happy moments for this skill." This said, he left them, and return'd no more, That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray, Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied, In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey, The same the Gipsies wore. Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring: At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors, On the warm ingle bench, the smock-frock'd boors Had found him seated at their entering, But, mid their drink and clatter, he would fly: And put the shepherds, Wanderer, on thy trace; And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks I ask if thou hast pass'd their quiet place; Or in my boat I lie Moor'd to the cool bank in the summer heats, Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills, And watch the warm green-muffled Cumner hills, And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats. For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground. Returning home on summer nights, have met Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe, Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, As the slow punt swings round: And leaning backwards in a pensive dream, And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream. |