Classic Poem

Low at her feet pale Roland sat,
Gazing up in her radiant face;
And said, " In such a time and place
How sweet were song, did thy voice but grace
The air with melody! " Whereat
The crowned lady smiled, and sent
Her glance to a little instrument
Which a crimson cord made fast
Up at the side of the polished mast;
And without further sign or command,
Roland placed it in her hand.

It was a curious instrument,
A kind of Persian mandolin.
Found perchance in an Arab's tent,
With every manner of gem besprent,
And wrought with all that tracery
Which Eastern art is cunning in:
The body was ribbed like a shell of the sea,
Yet black, and burnished as ebony;
The graceful neck was long and thin,
Where the cords ran up to golden keys;
And it looked as it had only been
Waked to mysterious melodies,
On phantom lakes and enchanted seas,
Flashing to fingers weird and wan,
In the minstrel ages lost and gone.

Waiting to hear the wakened lute,
The very air and the sea hung mute;
And the maiden, breathless with listening desire,
Crouched silently down at the side of the friar.
The lady's fingers, like swift wings,
Over the flashing cordage stirred.
Till music, like an answering bird,
Suddenly leaped from out the strings,
Round and round the cadence flew,
Sailing aloft and dropping low,
Now soaring with the wild sea-mew,
Flushing its breast in the sunset glow,
Then slowly dropping down the air,
Wailing with a wild despair,
Down and down,
Till it seemed to drown,
With wide pinions on the brine,
Weltering with no living sign,
Till the listener's pitying eye
Wept that so fair a thing should die.
Then with malicious laughter loud,
Jeering the sighing hearer's grief,
In a moment wild and brief,
Filling the air with mockery,
It leapt to the sky and pierced the cloud,
Soaring and soaring, till it seemed to be
Climbing to the airy throne,
Where the Thunder sits alone.

Roland listened, confused, amazed,
While an unknown frenzy thrilled his heart;
And Agatha on the lady gazed
With steadfast eyes and lips apart;
And there sat the friar smoothing his beard.
As into the maiden's eyes he peered
With a sidelong sinister glance;
While she, as one in a charmed trance,
Bending forward, could only see
Roland leaning on the lady's knee,
With pale, bewildered countenance,
Gazing up in her face, which beamed
As if a torchlight on it gleamed;
And flushed as with an orient wine,
Where passion's swift and fitful flame
On the breath of music went and came
Like a gusty blaze on a heathen shrine
" 'Tis a sight to make a graybeard feel, "
Exclaimed the monk, " his old heart reel,
E'en though it beats in the breast of a friar!
Old age is a rust which may conceal;
But under it there is the tempered steel
Holding its latent spark of fire.

" See how he looks in the lady's face,
And how her dark eyes gloat on him!
In each other's soul they gaze, and trace
Thoughts which to us are vague and dim.

" Ah me! it recalls that hour divine,
In a palace garden at day's decline,
When a youth beneath a Sicilian vine
Sat with a lady, and she was crowned
With scarlet flowers and leaves embrowned,
Even as they had been seared to death
In the hot sirocco of passion's breath!
Oh, how she played! The hours were drowned
In goblets of music, and love, and wine!
But, well-a-day! — for that same sin
The youth became a Capuchin! "