AGNES. PART FIRST. THE KNIGHT. THE tale I tell is gospel true, And pilgrims who have strayed to view The old, old story, — fair, and young, That matrons tell, with sharpened tongue, 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? 'Tis 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, One hour we rumble on the rail, One half-hour guide the rein, We reach at last, o'er hill and dale, 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, "T was in the second George's day 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, 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 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," This Strephon of the West could warm, Perchance he wooed as gallants use, Whom fleeting loves enchain, But still unfettered, free to choose, He saw the fairest of the fair, No band his roving foot might snare, PART SECOND. THE MAIDEN. WHY seeks the knight that rocky cape What chance his wayward course may shape No story tells; whate'er we guess, But Fate, who rules to blight or bless, |