PART FIRST.
THE KNIGHT THE tale I tell is gospel true, As all the bookmen know, And pilgrims who have strayed to view The wrecks still left to show.
The old, old story,--fair, and young, And fond,--and not too wise,-- That matrons tell, with sharpened tongue, To maids with downcast eyes.
Ah! maidens err and matrons warn Beneath the coldest sky; Love lurks amid the tasselled corn As in the bearded rye! But who would dream our sober sires Had learned the old world's ways, And warmed their hearths with lawless fires In Shirley's homespun days?
'T is like some poet's pictured trance His idle rhymes recite,-- This old New England-born romance Of Agnes and the Knight; Yet, known to all the country round, Their home is standing still, Between Wachusett's lonely mound And Shawmut's threefold hill.
One hour we rumble on the rail, One half-hour guide the rein, We reach at last, o'er hill and dale, The village on the plain.
With blackening wall and mossy roof, With stained and warping floor, A stately mansion stands aloof And bars its haughty door.
This lowlier portal may be tried, That breaks the gable wall; And lo! with arches opening wide, Sir Harry Frankland's hall! 'T was in the second George's day They sought the forest shade, The knotted trunks they cleared away, The massive beams they laid, They piled the rock-hewn chimney tall, They smoothed the terraced ground, They reared the marble-pillared wall That fenced the mansion round.
Far stretched beyond the village bound The Master's broad domain; With page and valet, horse and hound, He kept a goodly train.
And, all the midland county through, The ploughman stopped to gaze Whene'er his chariot swept in view Behind the shining bays, With mute obeisance, grave and slow, Repaid by nod polite,-- For such the way with high and low Till after Concord fight.
Nor less to courtly circles known That graced the three-hilled town With far-off splendors of the Throne, And glimmerings from the Crown; Wise Phipps, who held the seals of state For Shirley over sea; Brave Knowles, whose press-gang moved of late The King Street mob's decree; And judges grave, and colonels grand, Fair dames and stately men, The mighty people of the land, The "World" of there and then.
'T was strange no Chloe's "beauteous Form," And "Eyes' celestial Blew," This Strephon of the West could warm, No Nymph his Heart subdue.
Perchance he wooed as gallants use, Whom fleeting loves enchain, But still unfettered, free to choose, Would brook no bridle-rein.
He saw the fairest of the fair, But smiled alike on all; No band his roving foot might snare, No ring his hand enthrall..