Classic Poem

The Lady Loline was wond'rous fair,
With a golden gleam in her rippling hair,
And eyes of the deepest, darkest blue
That ever a beautiful soul shone through,
And the sweetest mouth
The wind from the South
Ever kissed to a dainty rose-leaf hue.

And she had a lover true and brave,
But lowly of birth and therefore banned
And sent, men said, to an early grave
In a foreign land.
Living or dead, he was out of the way
Of the long pursuit of the Baron Bray
For the lady's hand.

The Baron was bent, wrinkled and gray—
The Baron was querulous, crabbed and old,
But the Baron was rich—broad lands had he
From his castle gate clear down to the sea;
Had hounds, and horses, and hords of gold,
And, at last, the lady's consent is given
To wed the Baron to-night at seven.

The day had died in a drizzling rain,
And the purple glooms of twilight fall—
It will soon be dark in the grand old park,
And down by the moat and rampart wall,
But radiant light
Will stream to-night
From every casement of Chateau Chene.

The bride is arrayed in silken sheen,
With snowy buds and flowers between
The cloud-like folds of her costly lace,
With diamonds rare
In her gold-bronze hair;
Yet the eye could trace
A fitful shadow of anxious care
On her gentle face.

The clock in the turret-tower strikes eight—
But where is the groom
That he does not come?
The guests and the minstrels wondering wait,
And the wind cries wild,
Like a homeless child,
In the shivering elms of the castle gate.

The yule fire burns with a ruddy glow,
And the minstrel plays as the hours go by,
But the garlands fade and the guests speak low,
As if afraid of impending woe.
The bride looks out from her lattice pane,
But she only hears the soughing rain,
And the sobbing wind in the turrets high.

The clock tolls twelve in the ancient tower,
And the night wind shrieks in eldrich glee;
The lights grow dim in hall and bower,
And fair cheeks pale, for ghosts have power
In this weird hour
To walk the green earth free.
Hark! “Comes the bridegroom?” Nay, not he.

As a mail-clad from with a raven plume
Comes slowly out of the nightly gloom;
He makes no pause, he speaks no word,
Scarcely the fall of his tread is heard;
But the pale lights flare
In the sulphurous air
As he threads his way and mounts the stair
To the bride's own room.

There was a pause in the wind and rain,
But the chateau shook, and tremors ran
From dungeon keep to bartizan.
The guests and the minstrels held their breath,
As if they had looked on the face of death,
And fled away in pale affright
Into the dark and dismal night
From the horror-haunted Chateau Chene.

The morning sunshine softly stole
Over the scene of last night's dole,
Burnished the board where the feast was spread;
Kissed the garlands pale and dead,
And trembled into the purple gloom
That hung its folds in my lady's room.
But the lovely bride in silken sheen
Was not where they crowned her yestere'en.

They sought her east and they sought her west,
Afar and near, by land and sea;
But all in vain was their anxious quest:
Where could the lady be?
When and how had she met her doom?
And the phantom knight with the raven plume,
From whence, and what was he?

The wonder died, but the story ran
That the Seneschal, an aged man,
Avowed he had seen the phantom knight
Bearing away the fair young bride
In her robes of white,
Over the moat and through the park,
On a coal black steed, in the storm and dark,
As never a mortal man could ride.