Wyndham Towers | Page 6

no fitting word at tongue.?The wench hath wit and matter of her own,?And beauty, that doth seldom mate with wit,?Nature hath painted her a proper brown--?A russet-colored wench that knows her worth.?And mincing, too--should have her ruff propt up?With supertasses, like a dame at Court,?And go in cloth-of-gold. I'll get a suit?Of Genoa velvet, and so take her eye.?Has she a heart? The ladies of Whitehall?Are not so skittish, else does Darrell lie?Most villainously. Often hath he said?The art of blushing 's a lost art at Court.?If so, good riddance! This one here lets love?Play beggar to her prudery, and starve,?Feeding him ever on looks turned aside.?To be so young, so fair, and wise withal!?Lets love starve? Nay, I think starves merely me.?For when was ever woman logical?Both day and night-time? Not since Adam fell!?I doubt a lover somewhere. What shrewd bee?Hath buzzed betimes about this clover-top??Belike some scrivener's clerk at Bideford,?With long goose-quill and inkhorn at his thigh--?Methinks I see the parchment face of him;?Or one of those swashbuckler Devon lads?That haunt the inn there, with red Spanish gold,?Rank scurvy knaves, ripe fruit for gallows-tree;?Or else the sexton's son"--here Wyndham laughed,?Though not a man of mirth--indeed, a man?Of niggard humor; but that sexton's son--?Lean as the shadow cast by a church spire,?Eyes deep in the sockets, noseless, high cheek-boned,?Like nothing in the circle of this earth?But a death's-head that from a mural slab?Within the chancel leers through sermon-time,?Making a mock of poor mortality.?The fancy touched him, and he laughed a laugh?That from his noonday slumber roused an owl?Snug in his oaken hermitage hard by.?A very rare conceit--the sexton's son!
Not he, forsooth; he smacked of churchyard mould?And musty odors of moth-eaten palls--?A living death, a walking epitaph!?No lover that for tingling flesh and blood?To rest soft cheek on and change kisses with.?Yet lover somewhere; from his sly cocoon?Time would unshell him. In the interim?What was to do but wait, and mark who strolled?Of evenings up the hill-path and made halt?This side the coppice at a certain gate??For by that chance which ever serves ill ends,?Within the slanted shadow of The Towers?The maid Griselda dwelt. Her gray scarred sire?Had for cloth doublet changed the steel cuirass,?The sword for gardener's fork, and so henceforth?In the mild autumn and sundown of life,?Moving erect among his curves and squares?Of lily, rose, and purple flower-de-luce,?Set none but harmless squadrons in the field--?Save now and then at tavern, where he posed,?Tankard in hand and prattling of old days,?A white-mustached epitome of wars.
How runs the proverb touching him who waits??Who waits shall have the world. Time's heir is he,?Be he but patient. Thus the thing befell?Wherefrom grew all this history of woe:?Haunting the grounds one night, as his use was?Who loved the dark as bats and owlets do,?Wyndham got sound of voices in the air?That did such strange and goblin changes ring?As left him doubtful whence the murmurs came,?Now here, now there, as they were winged things--?Such trick plays Echo upon hapless wight?Chance-caught in lonely places where she dwells,?Anon a laugh rang out, melodious,?Like the merle's note when its ecstatic heart?Is packed with summer-time; then all was still--?So still the soul of silence seemed to grieve?The loss of that sweet laughter. In his tracks?The man stopped short, and listened. As he leaned?And craned his neck, and peered into the gloom,?And would the fabulous hundred eyes were his?That Argus in the Grecian legend had,?He saw two figures moving through a drift?Of moonlight that lay stretched across the lawn:?A man's tall shape, a slim shape close at side,?Her palm in tender fashion pressed to his,?The woven snood about her shoulders fallen,?And from the sombre midnight of her hair?An ardent face out-looking like a star--?As in a vision saw he this, for straight?They vanished. Where those silvery shadows were?Was nothing. Had he dreamed it? Had he gone?Mad with much thinking on her, and so made?Ghosts of his own sick fancies? Like a man?Carved out of alabaster and set up?Within a woodland, he stood rooted there,?Glimmering wanly under pendent boughs.?Spell-bound he stood, in very woeful plight,?Bewildered; and then presently with shock?Of rapid pulses hammering at heart,?As mad besiegers hammer at a gate,?To life came back, and turned on heel to fly?From that accursed spot and all that was,?When once more the girl's laugh made rich the night,?And melted, and the silence grieved anew.?Like lead his feet were, and he needs must halt.?Close upon this, but further off, a voice?From somewhere--Echo at her trick again!--?Took up the rhyme of Sweetheart, sigh no more.
It was with doubt and trembling?I whispered in her ear.?Go, take her answer, bird-on-bough,?That all the world may hear--?Sweetheart, sigh no more!
Sing it, sing it, tawny throat,?Upon the wayside tree,?How fair she is, how true she is,?How dear she is to me--?Sweetheart sigh no more!
Sing it, sing it, tawny throat,?And