Christabel Continued

O'er the misty moor most wide
Did Bracy, baron's bard then ride,
As, bidden haste by agéd lord,
He sought, 'fore night could fall again,
To reach the closest river-ford
To the foreign town of Tryermaine.

For when the bard had bidden been,
In his breast he'd felt a swell,
Though born of gaze of Geraldine
Or a passion in his lord he'd seen
It was not within him to tell.

No less, he pressed forth dusky road,
As sun's glow from horizon crept
And to the skies the wan stars leapt;
Last vespers turned to night-bound ode.

His duty he felt need to do
For his kind liege Sir Leoline.
He felt another drive though, too,
That felt to him as Geraldine,
With serpent glare like that he dream'd
Watch'd over him, and he did quake;
A curse from her! It almost seemed,
Had urged his mind such haste to make.

This moment of uncertainty
Then soonly drop't out from his head,
And hence thereafter, he instead
Dream't of how his great tale'd be told;
The way his héroic ride had
United parted lords of old.

Awash in this spell-bound purpose
He forgot Geraldine's fell curse,
And press'd most swiftly on toward
The town that lay at river-ford.
'Do I espy the steeple broad;
Harbinger to this drear domain?
The town of the castle of the lord
Roland De Vaux of Tryermaine?'

The beat, the beat those horse's feet
Did pound into the sodden ground;
The horse, it did ride on most fleet.
Alas, for Bracy rode no more,
Geraldine's curse hath laid him low
And, tumbling to the dusky floor
He thought he, on the winds that blow
Did hear an evil cackle ring.
Heroic man, untimely end;
Ne'er again shall Bracy sing.



Thricely pealed the matin-bell,
Proclaiming "morn!" o'er den and dell
And ringing from the rocky wall
Of Sir Leoline's castle hall.

The mists that'd rolled across the fields
At midnight's height of yester-night
Still held the stoic church concealed
From Leoline's sleep-weary sight,
But he cared not; his mind was marred
By musings on his errant bard.

The last command he'd made the man
Echoed about within his head
As if the drowsy sascritan
Rang that, and not his bells instead.
"Ride with most haste!" to him he'd said;
The urgency of his address
So great that one could not deny
His state of overt eagerness;
That Bracy must, this moment, fly
He'd tried to verily impress,
And not in the least bit imply:
He thus expected nothing less.

"O' hollow dawn, those mists you wear!
O' why must they torment me so?
Does respite ride within them there?
O' how I wish these winds could blow
Your mists away and leave you bare
That I might see my bard Bracy,
Riding with goodly company
As he did enter mine countree."

Alas, no such sight did he meet,
And, cursing the owl's fleeting 'coo!'
He left, to rest his wrinkled feet
And, pray, unfurrow his brow too.

Abandoning his balcony,
Instead towards his bed he made,
Towards the place where once she'd lay'd;
The wife he'd loved so ardently,
And, breathing but a fleeting sigh
He drop't unto his knees to pray,
His eyes uprist to morning sky
Where dawn broke into boundless day.





A continuation and emulation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's thoroughly excellent "Christabel".