The castle-bell! and Eginard not away! 
  With tremulous haste she led him to the door,
  When, lo! the courtyard white with fallen snow,
  While clear the night hung over it with stars! 
  A dozen steps, scarce that, to his own door: 
  A dozen steps? a gulf impassable! 
  What to be done?  Their secret must not lie
  Bare to the sneering eye with the first light;
  She could not have his footsteps at her door! 
  Discovery and destruction were at hand: 
  And, with the thought, they kissed, and kissed again;
  When suddenly the lady, bending, drew
  Her lover towards her half-unwillingly,
  And on her shoulders fairly took him there,—­
  Who held his breath to lighten all his weight,—­
  And lightly carried him the courtyard’s length
  To his own door; then, like a frightened hare,
  Fled back in her own tracks unto her bower,
  To pant awhile, and rest that all was safe.

  But Charlemaign the king, who had risen by night
  To look upon memorials, or at ease
  To read and sign an ordinance of the realm,—­
  The Fanolehen or Cunigosteura
  For tithing corn, so to confirm the same
  And stamp it with the pommel of his sword,—­
  Hearing their voices in the court below,
  Looked from his window, and beheld the pair.

  Angry the king,—­yet laughing-half to view
  The strangeness and vagary of the feat: 
  Laughing indeed! with twenty minds to call
  From his inner bed-chamber the Forty forth,
  Who watched all night beside their monarch’s bed,
  With naked swords and torches in their hands,
  And test this lover’s-knot with steel and fire;
  But with a thought, “To-morrow yet will serve
  To greet these mummers,” softly the window closed,
  And so went back to his corn-tax again.

  But, with the morn, the king a meeting called
  Of all his lords, courtiers and kindred too,
  And squire and dame,—­in the great Audience Hall
  Gathered; where sat the king, with the high crown
  Upon his brow, beneath a drapery
  That fell around him like a cataract,
  With flecks of color crossed and cancellate;
  And over this, like trees about a stream,
  Rich carven-work, heavy with wreath and rose,
  Palm and palmirah, fruit and frondage, hung.

  And more the high hall held of rare and strange: 
  For on the king’s right hand Leoena bowed
  In cloudlike marble, and beside her crouched
  The tongueless lioness; on the other side,
  And poising this, the second Sappho stood,—­
  Young Erexcea, with her head discrowned,
  The anadema on the horn of her lyre: 
  And by the walls there hung in sequence long
  Merlin himself, and Uterpendragon,
  With all their mighty deeds, down to the day
  When all the world seemed lost in wreck and rout,
  A wrath of crashing steeds and men; and, in
  The broken battle fighting hopelessly,
  King Arthur, with the ten wounds on his head.