Classic Poem

My life, till these rich hours of precious gage,
Was like that drowsy palace, vine-o'ergrown,
Where down long shadowy corridors lay strown
The slumbering shapes of seneschal or page,
Where griffon-crested oriels, dim with age,
Viewed briery terraces and lawns unmown,
And where from solemn towers of massive stone
Drooped the dull silks of mouldering bannerage.

But now the enchanted halls break sleep's control,
With murmurous change, at fate's predestined stroke,
And while my fluttering pulses throb or fail,
I feel, in some deep silence of my soul,
New strange delight awakening, as awoke
The princess in the immortal fairy-tale!