Wyndham Towers. Aldrich Thomas Bailey

latterly in most unhappy case,

           Because of matters to be here set forth.

             A thing of not much moment, as life goes,

           A thing a man with some philosophy

           Had idly brushed aside, as ‘t were a gnat

           That winged itself between him and the light,

           Had, through the crooked working of his mind,

           Brought Wyndham to a very grievous pass.

           Yet ‘t was a grapestone choked Anacreon

           And hushed his song.  There is no little thing

           In nature: in a raindrop’s compass lie

           A planet’s elements.  This Wyndham’s woe

           Was one Griselda, daughter to a man

           Of Bideford, a shipman once, but since

           Turned soldier; now in white-haired, wrinkled age

           Sitting beneath the olive, valiant still,

           With sword on nail above the chimney-shelf

           In case the Queen should need its edge again.

           An officer he was, though lowly born.

           The man aforetime, in the Netherlands

           And through those ever-famous French campaigns

           (Marry, in what wars bore he not a hand?)

           In Rawdon Wyndham’s troop of horse had served,

           And when he fell that day by Calais wall

           Had from the Frenchmen’s pikes his body snatched,

           And so much saved of him, which was not much,

           The good knight being dead.  For this deed’s sake,

           That did enlarge itself in sorrow’s eye,

           The widow deemed all guerdon all too small,

           And held her dear lord’s servant and his girl,

           Born later, when that clash of steel was done,

           As her own kin, till she herself was laid

           I’ the earth and sainted elsewhere.  The two sons

           Let cool the friendship: one in foreign parts

           Did gold and honor seek; at hall stayed one,

           The heir, and now of old friends negligent:

           Thus fortune hardens the ignoble heart.

           Griselda even as a little maid,

           Demure, but with more crotchets in the brain,

           I warrant ye, than minutes to the hour,

           Had this one much misliked; in her child-thought

           Confused him somehow with those cruel shapes

           Of iron men that up there at The Towers

           Quickened her pulse.  For he was gaunt, his face,

           Mature beyond the logic of his years,

           Had in it something sinister and grim,

           Like to the visage pregnant fancy saw

           Behind the bars of each disused casque

           In that east chamber where the harness hung

           And dinted shields of Wyndhams gone to grace—

           At Poitiers this one, this at Agincourt,

           That other on the sands of Palestine:

           A breed of fierce man-slayers, sire and son.

           Of these seemed Richard, with his steel cross-bow

           Killing the doves in very wantonness—

           The gentle doves that to the ramparts came

           For scattered crumbs, undreamful of all ill.

           Each well-sent dart that stained a snowy breast

           Straight to her own white-budding bosom went.

           Fled were those summers now, and she had passed

           Out of the child-world of vain fantasy

           Where many a rainbow castle lay in ruin;

           But to her mind, like wine-stain to a flask,

           The old distrust still clung, indelible,

           Holding her in her maidhood’s serious prime

           Well pleased from his cold eyes to move apart,

           And in her humble fortunes dwell secure.

           Indeed, what was she?—a poor soldier’s girl,

           Merely a tenant’s daughter.  Times were changed,

           And life’s bright web had sadder colors in ‘t:

           That most sweet gentle lady—rest her soul!—

           Shrunk to an epitaph beside her lord’s,

           And six lines shorter, which was all a shame;

           Gaunt Richard heir; that other at earth’s end,

           (The younger son that was her sweetheart once,)

           Fighting the Spaniards, getting slain perchance;

           And all dear old-time uses quite forgot.

           Slowly, unnoted, like the creeping rust

           That spreads insidious, had estrangement come,

           Until at last, one knew not how it fell,

           And little cared, if sober truth were said,

           She and the father no more climbed the hill

           To Twelfth Night festival or May-day dance,

           Nor commerce had with any at The Towers.

           Yet in a formless, misty sort of way

           The girl had place in Wyndham’s mind—the girl,

           Why, yes, beshrew him! it was even she

           Whom his soft mother had made favorite of,

           And well-nigh spoiled, some dozen summers gone.

             Perhaps because dull custom made her tame,

           Or that she was not comely in the bud,

           Her sweetness halting like a tardy May

           That wraps itself in mist, and seems not fair,

           For this or finer reason undivined,

           His thought she touched not, and was glad withal

           When she did note how others took his eye

           And wore rue after.  Thus was her white peace

           Undarkened till, it so befell, these two

           Meeting as they a hundred times had met

           On hill-path or at crossing of the weir,