ページの画像
PDF
ePub

LORD IVON.

Well!

A summer, and a winter, and a spring,
Went over me like brief and noteless hours.
For ever at the side of one who grew

With every morn more beautiful; the slave,
Willing and quick, of every idle whim;
Singing for no one's bidding but her own,
And then a song from my own passionate heart,
Sung with a lip of fire, but ever named

As an old rhyme that I had chanced to hear ;
Riding beside her, sleeping at her door,

Doing her maddest bidding at the risk

Of life-what marvel if at last I

grew

Presumptuous?

A messenger one morn

Spurr'd through the gate-" A revel at the court!

And many minstrels, come from many lands,
Will try their harps in presence of the king;

And 'tis the royal pleasure that my lord

Come with the young and lovely Lady Clare, Rob'd as the Queen of Faery, who shall crown The victor with his bays."

Pass over all

To that bewildering day. She sat enthroned
Amid the court; and never twilight star
Sprang with such sweet surprise upon the eye
As she with her rare beauty on the gaze

Of the gay multitude. The minstrels changed
Their studied songs, and chose her for a theme;
And ever at the pause all eyes upturn'd
And fed upon her loveliness.

The last

Long lay was ended, and the silent crowd
Waited the king's award-when suddenly

The sharp strings of a lyre were swept without,
And a clear voice claim'd hearing for a bard
Belated on his journey. Mask'd, and clad

In a long stole, the herald led me in,

A thousand eyes were on me: but I saw

The new-throned queen, in her high place, alone;

And, kneeling at her feet, 1 pressed my brow
Upon her footstool, till the images

Of my past hours rush'd thick upon my brain;
Then, rising hastily, I struck my lyre;
And, in a story woven of my own,

I so did paint her in her loveliness-
Pouring my heart all out upon the lines
I knew too faithfully, and lavishing

The hoarded fire of a whole age of love
Upon each passionate word, that, as I sunk
Exhausted at the close, the ravish'd crowd

Flung gold and flowers on my still quivering lyre;
And the moved monarch in his gladness swore
There was no boon beneath his kingly crown

Too high for such a minstrel !

Did my star

Speak in my fainting ear? Heard I the king?

Or did the audible pulses of my heart

Seem to me so articulate? I rose,

And tore my mask away; and, as the stole

Dropped from my shoulders, I glanced hurriedly
A look upon the face of Lady Clare.

It was enough! I saw that she was changed-
That a brief hour had chilled the open child
To calculating woman-that she read

With cold displeasure my o'er..daring thought;
And on that brow, to me as legible

As stars to the rapt Arab, I could trace

The scorn that waited on me! Sick of life,

Yet, even then, with a half-rallied hope

Prompting my faltering tongue, I blindly knelt, And claimed the king's fair promise

Of Lady Clare?

ISIDORE.

For the hand

LORD IVON.

No, sweet one-for a sword.

ISIDORE.

You surely spoke to her?

LORD IVON.

I saw her face

No more for years. I went unto the wars;
And when again I sought that palace door,

A glory heralded the minstrel boy

That monarchs might have envied.

ISIDORE.

Was she there?

LORD IVON.

Yes-and, O God! how beautiful! The last,

The ripest seal of loveliness, was set

Upon her form; and the all-glorious pride

That I had worshipped on her girlish lip,

When her scared dove fled to me, was matured

Into a queenly grace; and nobleness

Was bound like a tiara to her brow,

« 前へ次へ »