Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“ Who waits shall have the world. Time's heir is he, Be he but patient. Thus the thing befell Wherefrom grew all this history of woe: Haunting the grounds one night, as his use was Who loved the dark as bats and owlets do, Wyndham got sound of voices in the air That did such strange and goblin changes ring As left him doubtful whence the murmurs came, Now here, now there, as they were winged things— Such trick plays Echo upon hapless wight Chance-caught in lonely places where she dwells, Anon a laugh rang out, melodious, Like the merle's note when its ecstatic heart Is packed with summer-time ”

“ At a dark alcove's end of that long hall, The ancient armor-room in the east wing, A certain door (whereof no mortal knew save Wyndham, now that other lay a-cold) Was to the panels of the wall so set, And with such devilish shrewdness overlaid By carvings of wild-flower and curled grape-leaf, That one not in the favor of the trick, Albeit he knew such mechanism was, Ere he put finger on the secret spring Had need of Job for ancestor, in faith! ”

“ Say what you will, and paint things as you may, The devil is not black, with horn and hoof, As gossips picture him: he is a person Quite scrupulous of doublet and demeanor, As was this Master Wyndham of The Towers, Now latterly in most unhappy case, Because of matters to be here set forth. ”

“ Off shore, a buoy gleams like a dolphin's back Dripping with brine, and guards a sunken reef Whose sharp incisors have gnawed many a keel; There frets the sea and turns white at the lip, And in ill-weather lets the ledge show fang. A very pleasant nook in Devon, this, Upon the height of old was Wyndham Towers, Clinging to rock there, like an eagle's nest, With moat and drawbridge once, and good for siege; Four towers it had to front the diverse winds: Built God knows when, all record being lost, Locked in the memories of forgotten men. ”

“ Through the purple dark Straight home it sped, and into Wyndham's veins Its drop of sudden poison did distill. Now no sound was, save when a dry twig snapped And rustled softly down from branch to branch, Or on its pebbly shoals the meagre brook Made intermittent murmur. “So, 't is he!” Thus Wyndham breathing thickly, with his eyes Dilating in the darkness, “Darrell—he! I set my springe for other game than this; Of hare or rabbit dreamed I, not of wolf. His frequent visitations have of late Perplexed me; now the riddle reads itself. A proper man, a very proper man! ”

“ A thing of not much moment, as life goes, A thing a man with some philosophy Had idly brushed aside, as 't were a gnat That winged itself between him and the light, Had, through the crooked working of his mind, Brought Wyndham to a very grievous pass. Yet 't was a grapestone choked Anacreon And hushed his song. There is no little thing In nature: in a raindrop's compass lie A planet's elements. This Wyndham's woe Was one Griselda, daughter to a man Of Bideford, a shipman once, but since Turned soldier ”

“ For who could credence give to that mad tale Of churchyard folk appearing in broad day, And drifting out at casement like a mist? Marry, not they who crowded up the stair In haste, and peered into that empty cell, And had half mind to buffet Master Nokes, Standing with finger laid across his palm In argumentative, appealing way, Distraught, of countenance most woe-begone. ”

“ Ev'n so the Spring Unclasps the girdle of its loveliness Abruptly, in the North here: long the drifts Linger in hollows, long on bough and briar No slight leaf ventures, lest the frost's keen tooth Nip it, and then all suddenly the earth Is nought but scent and bloom. So unto him Griselda's grace unclosed. Where lagged his wit That guessed not of the bud that slept in stem, Nor hint had of the flower within the bud? If so much beauty had a tiger been, 'T had eaten him! In all the wave-washed length Of rocky Devon where was found her like For excellence of wedded red and white? ”

“ With what snail-pace the traitor time creeps by When one is out with fortune and undone! how tauntingly upon the dial's plate The shadow's finger points the dismal hour! Thus Wyndham, with hands clasped behind his back, Watching the languid and reluctant sun Fade from the metal disk beside the door. ”

“ Ah, and softer dreams he had Of an unnamed and sweetest mystery, And from the marble of his soul's desire Hewed out the white ideal of his love— A new Pygmalion! All things drew him home, This mainly. Foot on English earth once more, Dear earth of England his propitious fame A thorn in none but crooked Envy's side, He went cross-gartered, with a silken rose At golden lovelock, diamond brooch at hat Looping one side up very gallantly, And changed his doublet's color twice a day. ”

“ In the wide moat, run dry with summer droughts Great scarlet poppies lay in drifts and heaps, Like bodies fall'n there in some vain assault. Within, decay and dolor had their court— Dolor, decay, and silence, lords of all. ”

“ Within the year what worthy men have died, Persons of substance, civic ornaments, And here 's this gilt court-butterfly on wing! O thou most potent lightning in the cloud, Prick me this fellow from the face of earth! ”

“ Vainly in broken phalanx clamorous Did the scared rooks protest, and all in vain The moths on indolent white damask wings At door and casement rallied. Wyndham Towers Should have a bride, and ghosts had word to quit. And now, behold what strange thing came to pass. A certain workman, in the eastern wing Plying his craft alone as the day waned— One Gregory Nokes, a very honest soul, By trade wood-carver—stumbled on a door Leading to nowhere at an alcove's end, A double door that of itself swung back In such strange way as no man ever saw ”

“ The other—as a glow-worm to a star— Suspicious, morbid, passionate, self-involved, The soul half eaten out with solitude, Corroded, like a sword-blade left in sheath Asleep and lost to action—in a word, A misanthrope, a miser, a soured man, One fortune loved not and looked at askance. ”

“ Secret as bridal-kiss may murder be, Done was the deed that could not be undone Throughout eternity. O silent tongue That would blab all with silence! What to do? How hide this speechless witness from men's gaze? Living, that body vexed us; being dead 'T is like to give us trouble and to spare. ”

“ For never comes reflection, gay or grave, But it brings with it comrades of its hue. So did he fall to thinking how his day Declined, and how his narrow life had run Obscurely through an age of great events Such as men never saw, nor will again Until the globe be riven by God's fire. ”

“ A man's tall shape, a slim shape close at side, Her palm in tender fashion pressed to his, The woven snood about her shoulders fallen, And from the sombre midnight of her hair An ardent face out-looking like a star— As in a vision saw he this, for straight They vanished. ”

“ From out their lethargy At last awaking, searchers in hot haste, Some in the saddle, some afoot with hounds, Scoured moor and woodland, dragged the neighboring weirs And salmon-streams, and watched the wily hawk Slip from his azure ambush overhead, With ever a keen eye for carrion: But no man found, nor aught that once was man. ”

“ Or, urged by some swift hunger for green boughs, Would bid the hound to heel, and disappear Into the forest, with himself communing For lack of gossip. So do lonely men Make themselves tedious to their tedious selves. ”

“ A lonely wight that no kith had nor kin Save one, a brother—by ill-fortune's spite A brother, since 't were better to have none— Of late not often seen at Wyndham Towers, Where he in sooth but lenten welcome got When to that gate his errant footstep strayed. Yet held he dear those gray majestic walls, Time-stained and crusted with the sea's salt breath; There first his eyes took color of the sea, There did his heart stay when fate drove him thence, And there at last—but that we tell anon. Darrell they named him, for an ancestor Whose bones were whitening in Holy Land, The other Richard ”

“ The fancy touched him, and he laughed a laugh That from his noonday slumber roused an owl Snug in his oaken hermitage hard by. A very rare conceit—the sexton's son! Not he, forsooth; he smacked of churchyard mould And musty odors of moth-eaten palls— A living death, a walking epitaph! No lover that for tingling flesh and blood To rest soft cheek on and change kisses with. Yet lover somewhere ”