And we were there; with a led horse too; Armed for a journey I hardly knew Whither, but why, you well can guess. For often he whispered a certain name, The talisman of his happiness, That warmed his blood like a yule-log's flame. While we waited there, till its owner came, We saw how the castle's baronial girth, Like a giant's, loosed for reveling more, Shone; and we heard the wassail and mirth Where the mistletoe hung in the hearth's red roar, And the holly brightened the weaponed wall Of ancient oak in the banqueting hall. And the spits, I trow, by the scullions turned O'er the snoring logs, rich steamed and burned, While the whole wild-boar and the deer were roasted, And the half of an ox and the roe-buck haunches; While tuns of ale, that the cellars boasted, And casks of sack, were broached for paunches Of vassals who reveled in stable and hall. The song of the minstrel; the yeomen's quarrel O'er the dice and the drink; and the huntsman's bawl In the baying kennels, its hounds a-snarl O'er the bones of the banquet; now loud, now low, We could hear where we crouched in the drifting snow.
Was she long? did she come?... By the postern we Like shadows waited. My lord, Sir Hugh, Spoke, pointing a tower, "That casement, see? When a stealthy light in its slit burns blue And signals thrice slowly, thus--'t is she." And close to his breast his gaberdine drew, For the wind it whipped and the snow beat through. Did she come?--We had waited an hour or twain, When the taper flashed in the central pane, And flourished three times and vanished so. And under the arch of the postern's portal, Holding the horses, we stood in the snow, Stiff with the cold. Ah, me! immortal Minutes we waited, breath-bated, and listened Shivering there in the hiss of the gale: The parapets whistled, the angles glistened, And the night around seemed one black wail Of death, whose ominous presence over The stormy battlements seemed to hover. Said my lord, Sir Hugh,--to himself he spoke,-- "She feels for the spring in the sliding panel 'Neath the arras, hid in the carven oak. It opens. The stair, like a well's dark channel, Yawns; and the draught makes her taper slope. Wrapped deep in her mantle she stoops, now puts One foot on the stair; now a listening pause As nearer and nearer the mad search draws Of the thwarted castle. No smallest hope That they find her now that the panel shuts!... If the wind, that howls like a tortured thing, Would throttle itself with itself, then I Might hear how her hurrying footsteps ring Down the hollow ... there! 't is her fingers try The postern's bolts that the rust makes cling."-- But ever some whim of the storm that shook A clanging ring or a creaking hook In buttress or wall. And we waited, numb With the cold, till dawn--but she did not come.