AGNES. 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, 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 But who would dream our sober sires And warmed their hearths with lawless fires '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, The village on the plain. With blackening wall and mossy roof, And bars its haughty door. AGNES. This lowlier portal may be tried, "T was in the second George's day They piled the rock-hewn chimney tall, 3 Far stretched beyond the village bound 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, For such the way with high and low 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, The mighty people of the land, The "World" of there and then. 'T was strange no Chloe's "beauteous Form," And "Eyes' cœlestial Blew," This Strephon of the West could warm, No Nymph his Heart subdue! AGNES. 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, The past lies deaf and still, But Fate, who rules to blight or bless, Can lead us where she will. |