Page:Fugitive Poetry 1600-1878.djvu/403

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THE MURCIAN CAVALIER.
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Far to the westward she had seenThe winding Douro part;And she paused, amid that solitude,To still her throbbing heart!The Murcian Knight was by her side,But he spoke not now at all. . . .Her anxious thoughts be seemed to guess,And with mute and mournful steadinessHe watched the dim night-fall.
It came! among these forests deepAs the darkest midnight gloom!It came! . . . and nature seemed to beBut one unfathomed tomb!Many a rugged, trackless path,Amid that gloom they passed,Till close above a tree decayedA turret threw its spiral shade,Dim, desolate, and vast!
Between and the opened gleam, was plainThat lonely castle's height;The Queen's quick eye was traversingThe home of the Murcian Knight.All silently she gave her handTo mount the marble stairs;A massy door she opened wide,But the lofty halls on either sideWere tenantless and bare!
Save the dull echoes of their feet,All other sounds were dumb!And she felt the hand that grasped hersWas stiff, and damp, and numb!A strange and nameless terror ranAlong her shivering brain;Something like this her heart had known,When, alas! she heard no voice but one,At the towers of Castellan.
They paused where, from an inner hall,A lamp was burning bright;It streamed, with full and steady glare,On the face of the Murcian Knight.O'er every feature clear she sawUnearthly beauty wave!The purest white, the softest red;The eye alone was glazed and dead,As the sleeper's in the grave!

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