| |
ALONG that very Loire, with festal mirth | |
| Resounding at all hours, and innocent yet | |
| Of civil slaughter, was our frequent walk; | |
| Or in wide forests of continuous shade, | |
| Lofty and overarched, with open space | 5 |
| Beneath the trees, clear footing many a mile,— | |
| A solemn region. Oft amid those haunts | |
| From earnest dialogues I slipped in thought, | |
| And let remembrance steal to other times, | |
| When o’er those interwoven roots, moss-clad, | 10 |
| And smooth as marble or a waveless sea, | |
| Some hermit, from his cell forth strayed, might pace | |
| In sylvan meditation undisturbed; | |
| As on the pavement of a Gothic church | |
| Walks a lone monk, when service hath expired, | 15 |
| In peace and silence. But if e’er was heard— | |
| Heard, though unseen—a devious traveller, | |
| Retiring or approaching from afar | |
| With speed, and echoes loud of trampling hoofs | |
| From the hard floor reverberated, then | 20 |
| It was Angelica thundering through the woods | |
| Upon her palfrey, or that gentle maid | |
| Erminia, fugitive as fair as she. | |
| Sometimes methought I saw a pair of knights | |
| Joust underneath the trees, that as in storm | 25 |
| Rocked high above their heads; anon, the din | |
| Of boisterous merriment, and music’s roar, | |
| In sudden proclamation, burst from haunt | |
| Of Satyrs in some viewless glade, with dance | |
| Rejoicing o’er a female in the midst, | 30 |
| A mortal beauty, their unhappy thrall. | |
| The width of those huge forests, unto me | |
| A novel scene, did often in this way | |
| Master my fancy while I wandered on | |
| With that revered companion. And sometimes,— | 35 |
| When to a convent in a meadow green, | |
| By a brookside, we came, a roofless pile, | |
| And not by reverential touch of Time | |
| Dismantled, but by violence abrupt,— | |
| In spite of those heart-bracing colloquies, | 40 |
| In spite of real fervor, and of that | |
| Less genuine and wrought up within myself,— | |
| I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh, | |
| And for the matin-bell to sound no more | |
| Grieved, and the twilight taper, and the cross | 45 |
| High on the topmost pinnacle, a sign | |
| (How welcome to the weary traveller’s eyes!) | |
| Of hospitality and peaceful rest. | |
| And when the partner of those varied walks | |
| Pointed upon occasion to the site | 50 |
| Of Romorentin, home of ancient kings, | |
| To the imperial edifice of Blois, | |
| Or to that rural castle, name now slipped | |
| From my remembrance, where a lady lodged, | |
| By the first Francis wooed, and bound to him | 55 |
| In chains of mutual passion, from the tower, | |
| As a tradition of the country tells, | |
| Practised to commune with her royal knight | |
| By cressets and love-beacons, intercourse | |
| ’Twixt her high-seated residence and his | 60 |
| Far off at Chambord on the plain beneath; | |
| Even here, though less than with the peaceful house | |
| Religious, mid those frequent monuments | |
| Of kings, their vices and their better deeds, | |
| Imagination, potent to inflame | 65 |
| At times with virtuous wrath and noble scorn | |
| Did also often mitigate the force | |
| Of civic prejudice, the bigotry, | |
| So call it, of a youthful patriot’s mind; | |
| And on these spots with many gleams I looked | 70 |
| Of chivalrous delight. | |
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