Classic Poem

PROLOGUE .

There once was a knight, who was moody and drear,
Wan and hollow beyond all telling;
He staggered and stumbled, now hither, now here,
Some desolate dream him compelling.
So wooden, so lumpish, so clumsy was he,
That the girls and the flowers they tittered with glee,
When he shambled along past their dwelling.

In the gloomiest corner he sat there remote,
And shrank where his fellows were thronging;
And tho' never a word from his lips ye might note,
He would stretch forth his arms with strange longing.
But the one tiny tap at his door would he hear,
When singing and ringing came echoing clear
As the Minster the midnight was tonguing.

Then enters his loved one; she steals to his chair,
Clad in raiment of foam white and gushing,
But her veil it is only one magical glare;
Like a rose she is blushing and flushing.
Gold tresses are playing around her fair feet,
And her eyes have a power resistless and sweet.
To the other's embrace each is rushing.

The knight, he enclasps her with passionate might,
He was wooden — he bursts into fire;
He dreamt, but he wakes; he is red who was white;
The timid is bold with desire.
With her wiles and her glamour: the knight is beguiled,
And her veil she cast over his head while she smiled —
The veil of her witchery dire.

And now by enchantment he stands in a hall
Built of water, by water surrounded;
With the glare and the glitter, the rush and the fall
The knight is bemused and confounded.
But the water-fay clingeth still close to his side,
The knight he is bridegroom, the fay she is bride;
And the lutes of her handmaids resounded.

They play and they sing — and they sing with delight;
To her feet leapeth every dancer;
His wits and his senses are leaving the knight,
Yet more tightly he strains the entrancer.
When — the lights are extinguished, the brilliance is gone,
The knight he is sitting at home — and alone,
In the poet's poor desolate garret.