I said.--Then spoke ... I know not what it was. And seized her hand and kissed it and then said,-- "Thou art my promised wife. Thou hast no cause That is not mine. I love thee. We will wed. Isolda, come!"--A moment did she pause, Then shook her head and sighed, "My heart is dead. This can not be. Behold, that way is thine. I will not let thee share the way that's mine."
Then turning from me ere I could prevent Passed like a shadow from the shadowy room, Leaving my soul in shadow.... Naught was meant By my sweet flower of love then! bloom by bloom I'd watched it wither; then its fragrance went, And dust it was now.... It was dark as doom, And bells seemed ringing far off in the rain, When from that house I turned my face again.
Then in the night a trumpet; and the dull Close thud of horse and clash of spurs and arms; And glimmering helms swept by me.--Sorrowful I stood and waited till against the storm's Black breast, the Manse,--a burning carbuncle,-- Blazed like a battle-beacon, and alarms Of onslaught clanged around it.--Then, like one, Who bears with him God's curse, I galloped on.
From the terrace here, where the hills indent, You can see the uttermost battlement Of the castle there: the Clifford's home Where the seasons go and the seasons come And never a footstep else doth fall Save the prowling fox's; the ancient hall Echoes no voice save the owlet's call: Its turret chambers are homes for the bat; And its courts are tangled and wild to see; And where in the cellar was once the rat, The viper and toad move stealthily. Long years have passed since the place was burned, And he sailed to the wars in France and earned The name that he bears of the bold and true On his tomb.--Long years, since my lord, Sir Hugh, Lived, and I was his favorite page, And the thing then happened; and he of an age When a man will love and be loved again, Or off to the wars or a monastery; Or toil till he deaden his heart's hard pain; Or drink and forget it and finally bury.
I was his page. And often we fared Through the Clare demesne, in autumn, hawking-- If the Baron had known, how they would have glared, 'Neath their bushy brows, those eyes of mocking!-- That last of the Strongbows, Richard, I mean-- And growling some six of his henchmen lean To mount and after this Clifford and hang With his crop-eared page to the nearest oak, How he would have cursed us while he spoke! For Clare and Clifford had ever a fang In the other's side.... And I hear the clang Of his rage in the hall when the hawker told-- If he told!--how we met on the autumn wold His daughter, sweet Clara of Clare, the day Her hooded tiercel its brails did burst, And trailing its jesses, came flying our way-- An untrained haggard the falconer cursed While he tried to secure:--as the eyas flew Slant, low and heavily over us, Hugh,-- Who saw it coming, and had just then cast His peregrine hawk at a heron quarry,-- In his saddle rising thus, as it passed By the jesses caught, and to her did carry, Where she stood near the wood. Her face flushed rose With the glad of the meeting.--No two foes Her eyes and my lord's, I swear, who saw 'Twas love from the start.--And I heard him speak; Dismount, then kneel--and the sombre shaw, With the sad of the autumn waste and bleak, Grew spring with her smile, as the hawk she took On her slender wrist, where it pruned and shook Its callowness. Then I saw him seize The hand that she reached to him, long and white, As she smilingly bade him rise from his knees-- When he kissed her fingers her eyes grew bright. But her cheeks were pallid when, lashing through The thicket there, his face a-flare With the sting of the wind, and his gipsy hair Flying, the falconer came, and two Or three of the people of Castle Clare. And the leaves of the autumn made a frame For the picture there in the morning's flame.