"'Tis a bleak, wild place, for a legend fit,"
I thought, as I spelt out over the gate
The Latin inscription, with name and date,
So rusted and crusted with lichens old,
So rotted and spotted by rain and mould,
That in vain I strove to decipher it.
The whole place seemed as if it were dead,
So silent the sunshine over it shed
Its golden light, — and the grasses tall,
That quivered in clefts of the crumbling wall,
And a lizard that glanced with noiseless run
Over the moss-grown broken shield,
And panting, stood in the afternoon sun,—
Alone a token of life revealed.
The castle was silent as a dream,—
And its shadow into the courtyard slanted,
Longer and longer climbing the wall
Slowly to where the lizard panted.
All was still — save the running fall
Of the surf-waves under the stern sea-wall,
As they plunged along with a shaking gleam,—
And I said to myself—"The place is haunted."
I to myself seemed almost weird
As I mused there, touched by a sort of spell,—
Whether 'twas real or all ideal,
The castle, the sea, and myself as well,
I was not sure, I could not tell,
The whole so like a vision appeared,—
When near me upon the stones I heard
A footfall, that with its echo woke
The sleeping courtyard, and strangely broke
In on my dream, — as a pool is stirred
By a sudden stone in its silence thrown,—
And turning round, at my side I found
A mild old man with a snowy beard.
He seemed a sort of servitor,
By the drab half-livery he wore;
And his quiet look of pride subdued,
Mixed with an air of deference, showed
That he bore an office of service and trust.
Something there was in him fitted my mood,
And rhymed with the ruin and sadness and rust
Of the grim old castle, — a sort of grace,
Dreary and sad, looked out of his face;
A dimmed reflection it seemed to have caught
From a nobler mind and a higher thought;
As if he had held a trusted place
With one of a loftier fortune and race.
"This is a dreary and desolate spot,"
Turning I said to him: "Is there not
Some story or legend of the dead
That hath grown about it?" — He shook his head,
And sighed, — and pointing his veined hand
Through a rift in the wall, I saw below,
A dim old figure upon the sand,
That musingly wandered to and fro
Wrapped in a cloak, and with downcast head;
"You see him, that is the Prince," he said.
"The Prince? why surely no one lives
In this desolate spot, with its fever air,
So deadly although it seems so fair!"
"No," he answered, "he's only here
For this single day; but every year,
Just when the autumn is shaking the leaves,
For a single day, come rain or storm,
You will meet his noble and princely form,
(For a prince you would not doubt him to be,
Old as he is, and shaken by time,
And so changed from what he was in his prime,)
Wandering alone along the sea,
Musing and sighing constantly.
"Why? your wondering eyes ask; well,
If you command me, the story I'll tell;
Would you be pleased to stand, or sit
On this old stone bench, while I tell you it?
. . .
"This is the castle here;
And a place more bleak and drear
You might seek without finding for many a year.
All round, wherever the eye can strain,
Stretches a barren, desolate plain,
Thinly clad with wild, fine grasses,
Through which the free wind sighing passes
As it roams alone, — with here and there
A stunted shrub, to make more bare
Its wildness; or on some swelling knoll
A haycock's grey pyramid and pole,
That with rain and sun grows old and bleaches,—
Till miles away the landscape reaches
To those climbing hills, where blackened patches
Of foliage darken on their sides,
And that old grey cloud lowering rides.
Seaward, far off, there's a tree-fringed tongue
Of land, that into the sea outstretches,
With a purple swell of mountains swung
On the water's rim as far as you see,
Where that great gull flaps so heavily.
But just turn round, can any thing be
More lonely and wild than the castle is,
With its four round turrets and grim flat face,
Looking over the sea that beats at its base;
And its courtyard, where the fountain drips
In the old sarcophagus under the steps,
All green with mould, where that lizard slips,-
And its flapping shutters, and windows grated,
Here pierced, and there, as the whim dictated.
Can any thing be more dreary than this?
"You see it now in a sunny time,
And this Roman sunshine enchants the slopes
Of the barren plains, as youthful hopes
Turn the dreariest day to rhyme;
But when the night of our chill Decembers
Shuts in at the close of a lowering day,
And the winds roar down from the distance grey,
And rattle the shutters, and scatter the embers,
As they howl down the chimney's blackened throat,
And over the old sea-wall, and under
Those ruined arches with thump and thunder,
Whitens the surf in the stormy night;
And the cold owl hoots in the mouldering moat,
And the wild gull screams as he hurries by,
And the dog sneaks close by the blaze to snore,
And starts from his sleep to answer again
The desolate long-drawn howl of pain
Of the wolf-dog, prowling afar on the moor.
There are sounds in this castle enough to affright
The bravest heart, and for my part, I
Know that the ghosts of the family
Who have fallen by sword, and disease, and murder,
On such terrible nights keep watch and warder."
[Extracts]