445
  In peace and silence.  But if e’er was heard,—­
  Heard, though unseen,—­a devious traveller,
  Retiring or approaching from afar
  With speed and echoes loud of trampling hoofs
  From the hard floor reverberated, then 450
  It was Angelica [R] thundering through the woods
  Upon her palfrey, or that gentle maid
  Erminia, [S] fugitive as fair as she. 
  Sometimes methought I saw a pair of knights
  Joust underneath the trees, that as in storm 455
  Rocked high above their heads; anon, the din
  Of boisterous merriment, and music’s roar,
  In sudden proclamation, burst from haunt
  Of Satyrs in some viewless glade, with dance
  Rejoicing o’er a female in the midst, 460
  A mortal beauty, their unhappy thrall. 
  The width of those huge forests, unto me
  A novel scene, did often in this way
  Master my fancy while I wandered on
  With that revered companion.  And sometimes—­465
  When to a convent in a meadow green,
  By a brook-side, we came, a roofless pile,
  And not by reverential touch of Time
  Dismantled, but by violence abrupt—­
  In spite of those heart-bracing colloquies, 470
  In spite of real fervour, and of that
  Less genuine and wrought up within myself—­
  I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh,
  And for the Matin-bell to sound no more
  Grieved, and the twilight taper, and the cross 475
  High on the topmost pinnacle, a sign
  (How welcome to the weary traveller’s eyes!)
  Of hospitality and peaceful rest. 
  And when the partner of those varied walks
  Pointed upon occasion to the site 480
  Of Romorentin, home of ancient kings, [T]
  To the imperial edifice of Blois, [U]
  Or to that rural castle, name now slipped
  From my remembrance, where a lady lodged, [V]
  By the first Francis wooed, and bound to him 485
  In chains of mutual passion, from the tower,
  As a tradition of the country tells,
  Practised to commune with her royal knight
  By cressets and love-beacons, intercourse
  ’Twixt her high-seated residence and his 490
  Far off at Chambord on the plain beneath; [W]
  Even here, though less than with the peaceful house
  Religious, ’mid those frequent monuments
  Of Kings, their vices and their better deeds,
  Imagination, potent to inflame 495
  At times with virtuous wrath and noble scorn,
  Did also often mitigate the force
  Of civic prejudice, the bigotry,
  So call it, of a youthful patriot’s mind;
  And on these spots with many gleams I looked 500
  Of chivalrous delight.  Yet not the less,
  Hatred of absolute rule, where will of