Wyndham Towers | Page 8

had need at heart
For sight of Wyndham
Towers against the sky;
But chiefly did he bask him by the Thames,

For there 't was that Young England froze and thawed
By turns in
GLORIANA'S frown and smile.
As some wild animal that gets a wound,
And prescience hath of death,
will drag itself
Back to its cavern sullenly to die,
And would not
have heaven's airs for witnesses,
So Wyndham, shrinking from the
very stars
And tell-tale places where the moonlight fell,
Crept
through the huddled shadows back to hall,
And in a lonely room
where no light was,
Save what the moon made at the casement there,

Sat pondering his hurt, and in the dark
Gave audience to a host of
grievances.
For never comes reflection, gay or grave,
But it brings
with it comrades of its hue.
So did he fall to thinking how his day

Declined, and how his narrow life had run
Obscurely through an age

of great events
Such as men never saw, nor will again
Until the
globe be riven by God's fire.
Others had ventured for the Golden
Fleece,
Knaves of no parts at all, and got renown,
(By force of
circumstance and not desert,)
While he up there on that
rock-bastioned coast
Had rotted like some old hulk's skeleton,

Whose naked and bleached ribs the lazy tide
Laps day by day, and no
man thinks of more.
Then was jade Fortune in her lavish mood.

Why had he not for distant Colchis sailed
And been the Jason of these
Argonauts?
True, some had come to block on Tower Hill,
Or
quittance made in a less noble sort;
Still they had lived, from life's
high-mantling cup
Had blown the bead. In such case, if one's head

Be of its momentary laurel stripped
And made a show of stuck on
Temple Bar
Or at the Southwark end of London Bridge,
What
mattered it? At worst man dies but once--
So far as known. One may
not master death,
But life should be one's lackey. He had been

Time's dupe and bondsman; ever since his birth
Had walked this
planet with his eye oblique,
Grasped what was worthless, what were
most dear missed;
Missed love and fame, and all the sum of things

Fame gets a man in England--the Queen's smile,
Which means, when
she 's in humor, abbey-lands,
Appointments, stars and ribbons for the
breast,
And that sleek adulation that takes shape
I' the
down-drooping of obsequious lids
When one ascends a stair or walks
the pave.
Good Lord! but it was excellent to see
How Expectation
in the ante-room
Crooks back to Greatness passing to the Queen--

"Kind sir!" "Sweet sir!" "I prithee speed my suit!"
'T was somewhat
to be flattered, though by fools,
For even a fool's coin hath a kind of
ring.
Yet after all--thus did the grapes turn sour
To master Fox, in
fable--who would care
To moil and toil to gain a little fame,
And
have each rascal that prowls under heaven
Stab one for getting it?
Had he wished power,
The thing was in the market-place for sale
At
stated rates--so much for a man's soul!
His was a haughty spirit that
bent not,
And one to rise had need to cringe and creep.
So had his
brother into favor crawled,
Like slug into the bosom of a rose,
And

battened in the sun. At thought of him,
Forgotten for a moment,
Wyndham winced,
And felt his wound. "Why bides he not in Town

With his blond lovelock and wench-luring ways--
There runs his fox!
What foul fiend sends him here
To Wyndham Towers? Is there not
space enough
In this our England he needs crowd me so?
Has
London sack upon his palate staled,
That he must come to sip my
Devon cream?
Are all maids shut in nunneries save this one?
What
magic philtre hath he given her
To thaw the ice that melted not for
me?
Rich is he now that at his setting forth
Had not two silver
pieces to his purse.
It is his brave apparel dazzles her.
Thus puts he
bound and barrier to my love.
Another man were he abused as I . . .

I'll have no more of him! If I but dared--
Nay, I dare not. I have
fawn's blood, I think;
I would, and dare not!" Thrice the hooded clock

Solemnly, like some old Carthusian monk
With meagre face half
seen beneath his cowl,
Intoned the quarter. Memory went not back

When this was not a most familiar sound,
Yet as each stroke on the
dead silence fell
Wyndham turned, startled. Now the sanguine moon,

To clouded opal changing momently,
Rose sheer above the
pine-trees' ragged edge,
And through the wide-flung casement
reaching hand
With cold and spectral finger touched the plates
Of
his dead father's armor till it gleamed
One mass of silver. There it
stood complete,
That august panoply which once struck dread
To
foemen on the sunny plains of France,
Menacing, terrible, this instant
stood,
With vizard down and jousting-lance at charge
As if that
crumbled knight were quick within.
A footfall on the shingle walk below
Grated, a footfall light as
Mercury's
Disdaining earth, and Wyndham in the dark,
Half
crouched upon the settle with his nails

Indenting the soft wood-work,
held his breath.
Then suddenly a blind rage like a flame
Swept over
him and hurled him to his feet--
Such rage as must