Of treason or lese-majesty, 20
Such an accomplished knight was he.
His dwelling was just beyond the town,
At what he called his country-seat;
For, careless of Fortune’s smile or frown,
And weary grown of the world and its ways, 25
He wished to pass the rest of his days
In a private life and a calm retreat.
But a double life was the life he led,
And, while professing to be in search
Of a godly course, and willing, he said, 30
Nay, anxious to join the Puritan church,
He made of all this but small account,
And passed his idle hours instead
With roystering Morton of Merry Mount,
That pettifogger from Furnival’s Inn, 35
Lord of misrule and riot and sin,
Who looked on the wine when it was red.
This country-seat was little more
Than a cabin of logs; but in front of the door
A modest flower-bed thickly sown 40
With sweet alyssum and columbine
Made those who saw it at once divine
The touch of some other hand than his own.
And first it was whispered, and then it was known,
That he in secret was harboring there 45
A little lady with golden hair,
Whom he called his cousin, but whom he had wed
In the Italian manner, as men said,
And great was the scandal everywhere.
But worse than this was the vague surmise, 50
Though none could vouch for it or aver,
That the Knight of the Holy Sepulchre
Was only a Papist in disguise;
And the more to imbitter their bitter lives,
And the more to trouble the public mind, 55
Came letters from England, from two other wives,
Whom he had carelessly left behind;
Both of them letters of such a kind
As made the governor hold his breath;
The one imploring him straight to send 60
The husband home, that he might amend;
The other asking his instant death,
As the only way to make an end.
The wary governor deemed it right,
When all this wickedness was revealed, 65
To send his warrant signed and sealed,
And take the body of the knight.
Armed with this mighty instrument,
The marshal, mounting his gallant steed,
Rode forth from town at the top of his speed, 70
And followed by all his bailiffs bold,
As if on high achievement bent,
To storm some castle or stronghold,
Challenge the warders on the wall,
And seize in his ancestral hall 75
A robber-baron grim and old.
But when through all the dust and heat
He came to Sir Christopher’s country-seat,
No knight he found, nor warder there,
But the little lady with golden hair, 80
Who was gathering in the bright sunshine
The sweet alyssum and columbine;
While gallant Sir Christopher, all so gay,
Being forewarned, through the postern gate
Of his castle wall had tripped away, 85
And was keeping a little holiday
In the forests, that bounded his estate.
Then as a trusty squire and true
The marshal searched the castle through,
Not crediting what the lady said; 90
Searched from cellar to garret in vain,
And, finding no knight, came out again
And arrested the golden damsel instead,
And bore her in triumph into the town,
While from her eyes the tears rolled down 95
On the sweet alyssum and columbine,
That she held in her fingers white and fine.
The governor’s heart was moved to see
So fair a creature caught within
The snares of Satan and of sin, 100
And he read her a little homily
On the folly and wickedness of the lives
Of women half cousins and half wives;
But, seeing that naught his words availed,
He sent her away in a ship that sailed 105
For Merry England over the sea,
To the other two wives in the old countree,
To search her further, since he had failed
To come at the heart of the mystery.
Meanwhile Sir Christopher wandered away 110
Through pathless woods for a month and a day,
Shooting pigeons, and sleeping at night
With the noble savage, who took delight
In his feathered hat and his velvet vest,
His gun and his rapier and the rest. 115
But as soon as the noble savage heard
That a bounty was offered for this gay bird,
He wanted to slay him out of hand,
And bring in his beautiful scalp for a show,
Like the glossy head of a kite or crow, 120
Until he was made to understand
They wanted the bird alive, not dead;
Then he followed him whithersoever he fled,
Through forest and field, and hunted him down,
And brought him prisoner into the town. 125
Alas! it was a rueful sight,
To see this melancholy knight
In such a dismal and hapless case;
His hat deformed by stain and dent,
His plumage broken, his doublet rent, 130
His beard and flowing locks forlorn,
Matted, dishevelled, and unshorn,
His boots with dust and mire besprent;
But dignified in his disgrace,
And wearing an unblushing face. 135
And thus before the magistrate
He stood to hear the doom of fate.
In vain he strove with wonted ease
To modify and extenuate
His evil deeds in church and state, 140
For gone was now his power to please;
And his pompous words had no more weight
Than feathers flying in the breeze.
With suavity equal to his own
The governor lent a patient ear 145
To the speech evasive and high-flown,
In which he endeavored to make clear
That colonial laws were too severe
When applied to a gallant cavalier,
A gentleman born, and so well known, 150
And accustomed to move in a higher sphere.
All this the Puritan governor heard,
And deigned in answer never a word;
But in summary manner shipped away,
In a vessel that sailed from Salem Bay, 155
This splendid and famous cavalier,
With his Rupert hat and his popery,
To Merry England over the sea,
As being unmeet to inhabit here.
Thus endeth the Rhyme of Sir Christopher, 160
Knight of the Holy Sepulchre,
The first who furnished this barren land
With apples of Sodom and ropes of sand.
The Landlord’s Tale: Finale
THESE are the tales those merry guests
Told to each other, well or ill;
Like summer birds that lift their crests
Above the borders of their nests
And twitter, and again are still. 5
These are the tales, or new or old,
In idle moments idly told;
Flowers of the field with petals thin,
Lilies that neither toil nor spin,
And tufts of wayside weeds and gorse 10
Hung in the parlor of the inn
Beneath the sign of the Red Horse.
And st
ill, reluctant to retire,
The friends sat talking by the fire
And watched the smouldering embers burn 15
To ashes, and flash up again
Into a momentary glow,
Lingering like them when forced to go,
And going when they would remain;
For on the morrow they must turn 20
Their faces homeward, and the pain
Of parting touched with its unrest
A tender nerve in every breast.
But sleep at last the victory won;
They must be stirring with the sun, 25
And drowsily good night they said,
And went still gossiping to bed,
And left the parlor wrapped in gloom.
The only live thing in the room
Was the old clock, that in its pace 30
Kept time with the revolving spheres
And constellations in their flight,
And struck with its uplifted mace
The dark, unconscious hours of night,
To senseless and unlistening ears. 35
Uprose the sun; and every guest,
Uprisen, was soon equipped and dressed
For journeying home and city-ward;
The old stage-coach was at the door,
With horses harnessed, long before 40
The sunshine reached the withered sward
Beneath the oaks, whose branches hoar
Murmured: “Farewell forevermore.”
“Farewell!” the portly Landlord cried;
“Farewell!” the parting guests replied, 45
But little thought that nevermore
Their feet would pass that threshold o’er;
That nevermore together there
Would they assemble, free from care,
To hear the oaks’ mysterious roar, 50
And breathe the wholesome country air.
Where are they now? What lands and skies
Paint pictures in their friendly eyes?
What hope deludes, what promise cheers,
What pleasant voices fill their ears? 55
Two are beyond the salt sea waves,
And three already in their graves.
Perchance the living still may look
Into the pages of this book,
And see the days of long ago 60
Floating and fleeting to and fro,
As in the well-remembered brook
They saw the inverted landscape gleam,
And their own faces like a dream
Look up upon them from below. 65
FLOWER-DE-LUCE
CONTENTS
Flower-de-Luce
Palingenesis
The Bridge of Cloud
Hawthorne
Christmas Bells
The Wind over the Chimney
The Bells of Lynn
Killed at the Ford
Giotto’s Tower
To-morrow
Divina Commedia
Noël
Flower-de-Luce
The poems in this division were published under the title Flower-de-Luce in 1867. The title poem was written March 20, 1866.
BEAUTIFUL lily, dwelling by still rivers,
Or solitary mere,
Or where the sluggish meadow-brook delivers
Its waters to the weir!
Thou laughest at the mill, the whir and worry 5
Of spindle and of loom,
And the great wheel that toils amid the hurry
And rushing of the flume.
Born in the purple, born to joy and pleasance,
Thou dost not toil nor spin, 10
But makest glad and radiant with thy presence
The meadow and the lin.
The wind blows, and uplifts thy drooping banner,
And round thee throng and run
The rushes, the green yeomen of thy manor, 15
The outlaws of the sun.
The burnished dragon-fly is thy attendant,
And tilts against the field,
And down the listed sunbeam rides resplendent
With steel-blue mail and shield. 20
Thou art the Iris, fair among the fairest,
Who, armed with golden rod
And winged with the celestial azure, bearest
The message of some God.
Thou art the Muse, who far from crowded cities 25
Hauntest the sylvan streams,
Playing on pipes of reed the artless ditties
That come to us as dreams.
O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river
Linger to kiss thy feet! 30
O flower of song, bloom on, and make forever
The world more fair and sweet.
Palingenesis
In a letter dated March 20, 1859, Mr. Longfellow says: “For my own part, I am delighted to hear the birds again. Spring always reminds me of the Palingenesis, or re-creation, of the old alchemists, who believed that form is indestructible and that out of the ashes of a rose the rose itself could be reconstructed, — if they could only discover the great secret of Nature. It is done every spring beneath our windows and before our eyes; and is always so wonderful and so beautiful!” The poem, which was printed in the Atlantic for July, 1864, appears to have been written, or at any rate revised, just before publication.
I LAY upon the headland-height, and listened
To the incessant sobbing of the sea
In caverns under me,
And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened,
Until the rolling meadows of amethyst 5
Melted away in mist.
Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started;
For round about me all the sunny capes
Seemed peopled with the shapes
Of those whom I had known in days departed, 10
Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams
On faces seen in dreams.
A moment only, and the light and glory
Faded away, and the disconsolate shore
Stood lonely as before; 15
And the wild-roses of the promontory
Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed
Their petals of pale red.
There was an old belief that in the embers
Of all things their primordial form exists, 20
And cunning alchemists
Could re-create the rose with all its members
From its own ashes, but without the bloom,
Without the lost perfume.
Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science 25
Can from the ashes in our hearts once more
The rose of youth restore?
What craft of alchemy can bid defiance
To time and change, and for a single hour
Renew this phantom-flower? 30
“Oh, give me back,” I cried, “the vanished splendors,
The breath of morn, and the exultant strife,
When the swift stream of life
Bounds o’er its rocky channel, and surrenders
The pond, with all its lilies, for the leap 35
Into the unknown deep!”
And the sea answered, with a lamentation,
Like some old prophet wailing, and it said,
“Alas! thy youth is dead!
It breathes no more, its heart has no pulsation; 40
In the dark places with the dead of old
It lies forever cold!”
Then said I, “From its consecrated cerements
I will not drag this sacred dust again,
Only to give me pain; 45
But, still remembering all the lost endearments,
Go on my way, like one who looks before,
And turns to weep no more.”
Into what land of harvests, what plantations
Bright with autumnal foliage and the glow 50
Of sunsets burning low;
Beneath what midnight skies, whose constellations
>
Light up the spacious avenues between
This world and the unseen!
Amid what friendly greetings and caresses, 55
What households, though not alien, yet not mine,
What bowers of rest divine;
To what temptations in lone wildernesses,
What famine of the heart, what pain and loss,
The bearing of what cross! 60
I do not know; nor will I vainly question
Those pages of the mystic book which hold
The story still untold,
But without rash conjecture or suggestion
Turn its last leaves in reverence and good heed, 65
Until “The End” I read.
The Bridge of Cloud
BURN, O evening hearth, and waken
Pleasant visions, as of old!
Though the house by winds be shaken,
Safe I keep this room of gold!
Ah, no longer wizard Fancy 5
Builds her castles in the air,
Luring me by necromancy
Up the never-ending stair!
But, instead, she builds me bridges
Over many a dark ravine, 10
Where beneath the gusty ridges
Cataracts dash and roar unseen.
And I cross them, little heeding
Blast of wind or torrent’s roar,
As I follow the receding 15
Footsteps that have gone before.
Naught avails the imploring gesture,
Naught avails the cry of pain!
When I touch the flying vesture,
‘T is the gray robe of the rain. 20
Baffled I return, and, leaning
O’er the parapets of cloud,
Watch the mist that intervening
Wraps the valley in its shroud.
And the sounds of life ascending 25
Faintly, vaguely, meet the ear,
Murmur of bells and voices blending
With the rush of waters near.
Well I know what there lies hidden,
Every tower and town and farm, 30
And again the land forbidden
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 71
