'Tis midnight, and the broad full moon
Pours on the earth her silver noon;
Sheeted in white, like spectres of fear,
Their ghostly forms the towers uprear;
And their long dark shadows behind them are cast,
Like the frown of the cloud when the lightning hath past.
The warder sleeps on the battlement,
And there is not a breeze to curl the Trent;
The leaf is at rest, and the owl is mute—
But list! awaked is the woodland lute:
The nightingale warbles her omen sweet
On the hour when the ladye her lover shall meet.

She waves her hand from the loophole high,
And watcheth, with many a struggling sigh,
And hearkeneth in doubt, and paleth with fear,—
Yet tremblingly trusts her true knight is near;—
And there skims o'er the river—or doth her heart doat?—
As with wing of the night-hawk—her lover's brave boat.
His noble form hath attained the strand,
And she waves again her small white hand;
And breathing to heaven, in haste, a prayer,
Softly glides down the lonely stair;
And there stands by the portal, all watchful and still,
Her own faithful damsel awaiting her will.
The midnight lamp gleams dull and pale,—
The maidens twain are weak and frail,—
But Love doth aid his votaries true,
While they the massive bolts undo,—
And a moment hath flown, and the warrior knight
Embraceth his love in the meek moonlight.

The knight his love-prayer, tenderly,
Thus breathed in his fair one's ear
"Oh! wilt thou not, my Agnes, flee?—
And, quelling thy maiden fear,
Away in the fleeting skiff with me,
And, for aye, this lone heart cheer?"
"O let not bold Romara[7] seek"—
Soft answered his ladye-love,—
"A father's doating heart to break,
For should I disdainful prove
Of his high behests, his darling child
Will thenceforth be counted a thing defiled;
And the kindling eye of my martial sire
Be robbed of its pride, and be quenched its fire:
Nor long would true Romara deem
The heart of his Agnes beat for him,
And for him alone—if that heart, he knew,
To its holiest law could be thus untrue."
His plume-crowned helm the warrior bows
Low o'er her shoulder fair,
And bursting sighs the grief disclose
His lips can not declare;
And swiftly glide the tears of love
Adown the ladye's cheek;—
Their deep commingling sorrows prove
The love they cannot speak!
The moon shines on them, as on things
She loves to robe with gladness,—
But all her light no radiance brings
Unto their hearts' dark sadness:
Forlornly, 'neath her cheerless ray,—
Bosom to bosom beating,—
In speechless agony they stay,
With burning kisses greeting;—
Nor reck they with what speed doth haste
The present hour to join the past.
"Ho! lady Agnes, lady dear!"
Her fearful damsel cries;
"You reckon not, I deeply fear,
How swift the moontide flies!
The surly warder will awake,
The morning dawn, anon,—
My heart beginneth sore to quake,—
I fear we are undone!"

But Love is mightier than Fear:
The ladye hasteth not:
The magnet of her heart is near,
And peril is forgot!
She clingeth to her knight's brave breast
Like a lorn turtle-dove,
And 'mid the peril feeleth rest,—
The full, rapt rest of Love!
"I charge thee, hie thee hence, sir knight!"
The damsel shrilly cries;
"If this should meet her father's sight,
By Heaven! my lady dies."
The warrior rouseth all his pride,
And looseth his love's caress,—
Yet slowness of heart doth his strength betide
As he looks on her loveliness:—
But again the damsel their love-dream breaks,—
And, self-reproachingly,
The knight his resolve of its fetters shakes,
And his spirit now standeth free.

Then, came the last, absorbing kiss,
True Love can ne'er forego,—
That dreamy plenitude of bliss
Or antepast of woe,—
That seeming child of Heaven, which at its birth
Briefly expires, and proves itself of earth.
The ladye hieth to her couch;—
And when the morn appears,
The changes of her cheek avouch,
Full virginly her fears;—
But her doating father can nought discern
In the hues of the rose and the lily that chase
Each other across her lovely face,—
Save a sweetness that softens his visage stern.

Romara's skiff is on the Trent,
And the stream is in its strength,—
For a surge, from its ocean-fountain sent,
Pervades its giant length:[8]
Roars the hoarse heygre[9] in its course,
Lashing the banks with its wrathful force;
And dolefully echoes the wild-fowl's scream,
As the sallows are swept by the whelming stream;
And her callow young are hurled for a meal,
To the gorge of the barbel, the pike, and the eel:
The porpoise[10] heaves 'mid the rolling tide,
And, snorting in mirth, doth merrily ride,—
For he hath forsaken his bed in the sea,
To sup on the salmon, right daintily!
In Romara's breast a tempest raves:
He heeds not the rage of the furrowy waves:
Supremely his hopes and fears are set
On the image of Agnes Plantagenet:[11]
And though from his vision fade Gainsburgh's towers,
And the moon is beclouded, and darkness lours,
Yet the eye of his passion oft pierceth the gloom,
And beholds his Beloved in her virgin bloom—
Kneeling before the holy Rood,—
All clasped her hands,—
Beseeching the saints and angels good
That their watchful bands
Her knight may preserve from a watery tomb!
What deathful scream rends Romara's heart?—
Is it the bittern that, flapping the air,
Doth shriek in madness, and downward dart,
As if from the bosom of Death she would tear
Her perished brood,—or a shroud would have
By their side, in the depths of their river-grave?
Hark! hark! again!—'tis a human cry,
Like the shriek of a man about to die!
And its desolateness doth fearfully pierce
The billowy boom of the torrent fierce;
And, swift as a thought
Glides the warrior's boat
Through the foaming surge to the river's bank,
Where, lo!—by a branch of the osiers dank,
Clingeth one in agony
Uttering that doleful cry!
His silvery head of age upborne
Appeared above the wave;
So nearly was his strength outworn,
That all too late to save
Had been the knight, if another billow
Its force on his fainting frame, had bent,—
Nay, his feeble grasp by the drooping willow
The beat of a pulse might have fatally spent.
With eager pounce did Romara take
From the yawning wave its prey,—
But nought to his deliverer spake
The man with the head of gray:
And the warrior stripped, with needful haste,
The helpless one of his drenchËd vest,
And wrapt his own warm mantle round
The chill one in his deathly swound.
The sea-born strength of the stream is spent,
And Romara's boat outstrips its speed,—
For his stalwart arm to the oar is bent,
And swiftly the ebbing waves recede.
Divinely streaketh the morning-star
With a wavy light the rippling waters;
And the moon looks on from the west, afar,
And palely smiles, with her waning daughters,
The thin-strown stars, which their vigil keep
Till the orient sun shall awake from sleep.
The sun hath awoke; and in garments of gold
The turrets of Torksey are livingly rolled;
Afar, on Trent's margin, the flowery lea
Exhales her dewy fragrancy;
And gaily carols the matin lark,
As the warrior hastes to moor his bark.
Two menials hastened to the beach,
For signal none need they;
On the towers they kept a heedful watch
As the skiff glode on its way:
With silent step and breathless care
The rescued one they softly bear,
And bring him, at their lord's behest,
To a couch of silken pillowed rest.
The serfs could scarce avert their eye
From his manly form and mien,
As, with closËd lids, all reverendly,
He lay in peace, serene.

And Romara thought, as he gazing leant
O'er the slumberer's form, that so pure a trace
Of the spirit of Heaven with the earthly blent
Dwelt only there, and in Agnes' face.
The leech comes forth at the hour of noon,
And saith, that the sick from his deathly swoon
Will awake anon; and Romara's eye,
Uplit, betokens his heartfelt joy;
And again o'er the slumberer's couch he bows
Till, slowly, those peaceful lids unclose,—
When, long, with heavenward-fixËd gaze,
With lowly prayer and grateful praise,
The aged man, from death reprieved,
His bosom of its joy relieved.—
Then did Romara thus address
His gray guest, in his reverendness:
"Now, man of prayer come tell to me
Some spell of thy holy mystery!
Some vision hast had of the Virgin bright,—
Or message, conveyed from the world of light,
By the angels of love who in purity stand
'Fore the throne of our Lord in the heavenly land?
"I hope, when I die, to see them there:
For I love the angels so holy and fair:
And often, I trust, my prayer they greet
With smiles, when I kneel and kiss their feet
In the missal, my mother her weeping child gave,
But a day or two ere she was laid in the grave.
"Sage man of prayer, come tell to me
What holy shapes in sleep they see
Who love the blest saints and serve them well!
I pray thee, sage man, to Romara tell,
For a guerdon, thy dreams,—sith, to me thou hast said
No thanks that I rescued thy soul from the dead."
But, when the aged man arose
And met Romara's wistful eye,—
What accents shall the change disclose
That marked his visage, fearfully?—
From joy to grief and deepest dole,
From radiant hope to dark presage
Of future ills beyond control—
Hath passed, the visage of the sage.
"Son of an honoured line, I grieve,"
Outspake the reverend seer,
"That I no guerdon thee can give
But words of woe and fear!—
Thy sun is setting!—and thy race,
In thee, their goodly heir,
Shall perish, nor a feeble trace
Their fated name declare!—
Thy love is fatal: fatal, too,
This act of rescue brave—
For, him who from destruction drew
My life, no arm can save!"
He said,—and took his lonely way
Far from Romara's towers.—
His fateful end from that sad day
O'er Torksey's chieftain lowers:—
Yet, vainly, in his heart a shrine
Hope builds for love,—with faith;—
Alas! for him with frown malign
Waiteth the grim king Death!

Plantagenet hath dungeons deep
Beneath his castled halls;—
Plantagenet awakes from sleep
To count his dungeoned thralls.
Alone, with the torch of blood-red flame,
The man of blood descends;
And the fettered captives curse his name,
As through the vaults he wends.—
His caverns are visited, all, save one,
The deepest, and direst in gloom,—
Where his father, doomed by a demon son,
Abode in a living tomb.—
"I bring thee bread and water, sire!
Brave usury for thy gold!
I fear my filial zeal will tire
To visit, soon, thy hold!"

Thus spake the fiendish-hearted lord,
And wildly laughed, in scorn:
Like thunder round the cell each word
By echoing fiends is borne,—
But not a human heart is there
The baron's scorn or hate to fear!
And the captives tell, as he passeth again,—
That tyrant, in his rage,—
How an angel hath led the aged man
To his heavenly heritage!
The wrathful baron little recked
That angel was his darling child;
Or knew his dark ambition checked
By her who oft his rage beguiled,—
By her on whom he ever smiled:—
This had he known, from that dread hour,
His darling's smile had lost its power,—
And his own hand, without remorse,
Had laid her at his feet a corse!—
Plantagenet's banners in pride are borne
To the sound of pipe and drum!
And his mailËd bands, with the dawn of morn,
To Romara's walls are come.
"We come not as foes," the herald saith,—
"But we bring Plantagenet's shriven faith
That thou, Romara, in thine arms
Shall soon enfold thy true love's charms:
Let no delay thy joy betide!—
Thy Agnes soon shall be thy bride!"
The raven croaks as Torksey's lord
Attends that bannered host;
But the lover is deaf to the omen-bird—
The fatal moat is crossed!
"Ride, ride;" saith the baron,—"thy ladye fain
And the priest—by the altar wait!"—
And the spearmen seize his bridle-rein,
And hurry him to his fate.
"A marriage by torchlight!" the baron said;
"This stair to the altar leads!
We patter our prayers, 'mong the mouldering dead,—
And there we tell our beads!"

Along the caverned dungeon's gloom
The tyrant strides in haste;
And, powerless, to his dreadful doom
The victim followeth fast.
The dazËd captives quake and stare
At the sullen torch's blood-red glare,
And the lover starts aghast
At the deathlike forms they wear!
Too late, the truth upon him breaks!—
Romara's heart is faint!—
"Behold thy bride!" the baron shrieks—
"Wilt hear the wedding chaunt?
This chain once bound my father here,
Who would have found his grave—
The cursed dotard!—'neath the wave,—
Had not thy hateful hand been near.—
Be this the bride thou now shalt wed!
This dungeon dank thy bridal bed!—
And when thy youthful blood shall freeze
In death,—may fiends thy spirit seize!"—
Plantagenet hath minions fell
Who do their master's bidding well:—
Few days Romara pines in dread:—
His soul is with the sainted dead!—
Plantagenet hath reached his bourne!
What terrors meet his soul forlorn
And full of stain,—I may not say:—
Reveal them shall the Judgment Day!—
Her orisons at matin hour,
At noon, and eve, and midnight toll,
For him, doth tearful Agnes pour!—
Jesu Maria! sain his soul!