XXXVIII

"My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride! Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest? Thy beauty's shield, heart-shap'd and vermeil dyed?

Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest After so many hours of toil and quest, A famish'd pilgrim, saved by miracle. Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think'st well To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel.

XXXIX

"Hark! 'tis an elfin-storm from faery land,
Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed:
Arise arise! the morning is at hand; -
The bloated wassailers will never heed:-
Let us away, my love, with happy speed;
There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,
Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead:
Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be,

For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee."

XL

She hurried at his words, beset with fears,
For there were sleeping dragons all around,
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.
In all the house was heard no human sound.
A chain-droop'd lamp was flickering by each
door;

The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound, Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar; And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

XLI

They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;
Like phantoms, to the iron porch they glide;
Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,
With a huge empty flagon by his side:

The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,
But his sagacious eye an inmate owns:

By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:

The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

XLII

And they are gone: ay, ages long ago These lovers fled away into the storm. That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe, And all his warrior-guests with shade and form Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm, Were long be-nightmar'd. Angela the old Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform; The Beadsman, after thousand aves told, For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold. JOHN KEATS.

THE SCHOLAR GIPSY

Go, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill;
Go, Shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes:
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,
Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,
Nor the cropp'd grasses shoot another head.
But when the fields are still,

And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest,
And only the white sheep are sometimes seer
Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanch'd

green,

Come, Shepherd, and again renew the quest.

Here, where the reaper was at work of late,
In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves
His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse,
And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,
Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to
use;

Here will I sit and wait,

While to my ear from uplands far away

The bleating of the folded flocks is borne;
With distant cries of reapers in the corn

All the live murmur of a summer's day.

Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field,

And here till sun-down, Shepherd, will I be.

Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep:

And air-swept lindens yield

Their scent, and rustle down their perfum'd showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,
And bower me from the August sun with shade;
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers:

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book
Come, let me read the oft-read tale again,

The story of that Oxford scholar poor Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain, Who, tir'd of knocking at Preferment's door, One summer morn forsook

His friends, and went to learn the Gipsy lore, And roam'd the world with that wild brotherhood,

And came, as most men deem'd, to little good, But came to Oxford and his friends no more.

But once, years after, in the country lanes,
Two scholars whom at college erst he knew
Met him, and of his way of life enquir'd.
Whereat he answer'd, that the Gipsy crew,
His mates, had arts to rule as they desir'd
The workings of men's brains;

And they can bind them to what thoughts they will:

"And I," he said, "the secret of their art, When fully learn'd, will to the world impart: But it needs happy moments for this skill."

This said, he left them, and return'd no more,
But rumours hung about the country side

That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray, Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied,

In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey,

The same the Gipsies wore.

Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring: At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors, On the warm ingle bench, the smock-frock'd boors

Had found him seated at their entering,

But, mid their drink and clatter, he would fly:
And I myself seem half to know thy looks,

And put the shepherds, Wanderer, on thy trace; And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks

I ask if thou hast pass'd their quiet place;

Or in my boat I lie

Moor'd to the cool bank in the summer heats, Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine

fills,

And watch the warm green-muffled Cumner hills,

And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats.

For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground.
Thee, at the ferry, Oxford riders blithe,

Returning home on summer nights, have met Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe, Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, As the slow punt swings round:

And leaning backwards in a pensive dream,
And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers
Pluck'd in shy fields and distant woodland
bowers,

And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream.