125
But yesternight and she would be
As pale and still as wither’d flowers,
And now to-night she laughs and speaks
And has a colour in her cheeks;
Christ keep us from such fantasy!”—­ 130
Yes, now the longing is o’erpast,
Which, dogg’d deg. by fear and fought by shame, deg.132
Shook her weak bosom day and night,
Consumed her beauty like a flame,
And dimm’d it like the desert-blast. 135
And though the bed-clothes hide her face,
Yet were it lifted to the light,
The sweet expression of her brow
Would charm the gazer, till his thought
Erased the ravages of time, 140
Fill’d up the hollow cheek, and brought
A freshness back as of her prime—­
So healing is her quiet now. 
So perfectly the lines express
A tranquil, settled loveliness, 145
Her younger rival’s purest grace.

The air of the December-night
Steals coldly around the chamber bright,
Where those lifeless lovers be;
Swinging with it, in the light 150
Flaps the ghostlike tapestry. 
And on the arras wrought you see
A stately Huntsman, clad in green,
And round him a fresh forest-scene. 
On that clear forest-knoll he stays, 155
With his pack round him, and delays. 
He stares and stares, with troubled face,
At this huge, gleam-lit fireplace,
At that bright, iron-figured door,
And those blown rushes on the floor. 160
He gazes down into the room
With heated cheeks and flurried air,
And to himself he seems to say: 
"What place is this, and who are they? 
Who is that kneeling Lady fair? 165
And on his pillows that pale Knight
Who seems of marble on a tomb? 
How comes it here, this chamber bright,
Through whose mullion’d windows clear
The castle-court all wet with rain, 170
The drawbridge and the moat appear,
And then the beach, and, mark’d with spray,
The sunken reefs, and far away
The unquiet bright Atlantic plain? 
—­What, has some glamour made me sleep, 175
And sent me with my dogs to sweep,
By night, with boisterous bugle-peal,
Through some old, sea-side, knightly hall,
Not in the free green wood at all? 
That Knight’s asleep, and at her prayer 180
That Lady by the bed doth kneel—­
Then hush, thou boisterous bugle-peal!"
—­The wild boar rustles in his lair;
The fierce hounds snuff the tainted air;
But lord and hounds keep rooted there. 185

Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake,
O Hunter! and without a fear
Thy golden-tassell’d bugle blow,
And through the glades thy pastime take—­
For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here! 190
For these thou seest are unmoved;
Cold, cold as those who lived and loved
A thousand years ago. deg. deg.193