Slowly, beneath her trembling hand,
The bolts recede, and backward flung,
With harsh recoil and sullen clang
The door upon its hinges swung.
There, in a little moonlit room,

She sees a weird and withered crone,
Who sat and spun amid the gloom,
And turned her wheel with drowsy drone.
With mute amaze and wondering awe,
A passing moment stood the maid,
Then, entering at the narrow door,
More near the mystic task surveyed.
She saw her twine the flaxen fleece,

She saw her draw the flaxen thread, She view'd the spindle's shining point, And, pleased, the novel task surveyed. A sudden longing seized her breast

To twine the fleece, to turn the wheel: She stretched her lily hand, and pierced Her finger with the shining steel! Slowly her heavy eyelids close,

She feels a drowsy torpor creep From limb to limb, till every sense Is locked in an enchanted sleep. A dreamless slumber, deep as night,

In deathly trance her senses locked; At once through all its massive vaults, And gloomy towers the castle rocked: The beldame roused her from her lair, And raised on high a mournful wailA shrilly scream that seemed to float

A requiem on the dying gale,

A hundred years shall pass," she said, "Ere those blue eyes behold the morn, Ere these deserted halls and towers

Shall echo to a bugle-horn.

A hundred Norland winters pass,

While drenching rains and drifting snows, Shall beat against the castle walls,

Nor wake them from their long repose.

A hundred times the golden grain

Shall wave beneath the harvest moon, Twelve hundred moons shall wax and wane Ere yet thine eyes behold the sun!" She ceased but still the mystic rhyme The long-resounding aisles prolong,

And all the castle's echoes chime

In answering cadence to her song.

She bore the maiden to her bower,
An ancient chamber wide and low,
Where golden sconces from the wall
A faint and trembling lustre throw;
A silent chamber, far apart,

Where strange and antique arras hung, That waved along the mouldering walls, And in the gusty night-wind swung. She laid her on the ivory bed,

And gently smoothed each snowy limb, Then drew the curtain's dusky fold To make the entering daylight dim.

PART II.

And all around, on every side,
Throughout the castle's precincts wide
In every bower and hall,
All slept the warder in the court,
The figures on the arras wrought,
The steed within his stall.

No more the watch-dog bayed the moon,
The owlet ceased her boding tune,
The raven on his tower,

All hushed in slumber still and deep,
Enthralled in an enchanted sleep,
Await the appointed hour.

A pathless forest, wild and wide,
Engirt the castle's inland side,

And stretched for many a mile;
So thick its deep, impervious screen,
The castle towers were dimly seen
Above the mouldering pile.
So high the ancient cedars sprung,
So far aloft their branches flung,
So close the covert grew,
No foot its silence could invade,
Nor eye could pierce its depths of shade,
Or see the welkin through!
Yet oft, as from some distant mound,
The traveller cast his eyes around,
O'er wold and woodland gray,
He saw, athwart the glimmering light
Of moonbeams, on a misty night,
A castle far away..

A hundred Norland winters passed,
While drenching rain and drifting snows,
Beat loud against the castle walls,

Nor broke the maiden's long repose.
A hundred times on vale and hill

The reapers bound the golden corn-And now the ancient halls and towers Re-echo to a bugle-horn!

A warrior from a distant land,

With helm and hauberk, spear and brand,
And high, untarnished crest,

By visions of enchantment led,
Hath vowed, before the morning's red,
To break her charmèd rest.

From torrid clime beyond the main
He comes the costly prize to gain,
O'er deserts waste and wide.
No dangers daunt, no toils can tire:
With throbbing heart and soul on fire
He seeks his sleeping bride.
He gains the old, enchanted wood,
Where never mortal footsteps trod,
He pierced its tangled gloom;

A chillness loads the lurid air,

Where baleful swamp-fires gleam and glare,
His pathway to illume.

Well might the warrior's courage fail,
Well might his lofty spirit quail,
On that enchanted ground;
open foeman meets him there,
But, borne upon the murky air,

No

Strange horror broods around!
At every turn his footsteps sank
Mid tangled boughs and mosses dank,
For long and weary hours-
Till issuing from the dangerous wood,
The castle full before him stood,

With all its flanking towers!

The moon a paly lustre sheds;

Resolved, the grass-grown court he treads, The gloomy portal gained

He crossed the threshold's magic bound,

He paced the hall, where all around

A deathly silence reigned.

No fears his venturous course could stay-
Darkling he groped his dreary way
Up the wide staircase sprang.

It echoed to his mailed heel;

With clang of arms and clash of steel
The silent chambers rang.
He sees a glimmering taper gleam
Far off, with faint and trembling beam,
Athwart the midnight gloom :
Then first he felt the touch of fear,
As with slow footsteps drawing near,
He gained the lighted room.
And now the waning moon was low,
The perfumed tapers faintly glow,
And, by their dying gleam,
He raised the curtain's dusky fold,
And lo his charmed eyes behold,.
The lady of his dream!

As violets peep from wintry snows,
Slowly her heavy lids unclose,

And gently heaves her breast;
But all unconscious was her gaze,
Her
eye with listless languor strays
From brand to plumy crest;

A rising blush begins to dawn
Like that which steals at early morn
Across the eastern sky;

And slowly, as the morning broke,
The maiden from her trance awoke
Beneath his ardent eye!.

As the first kindling sunbeams threw
Their level light athwart the dew,

And tipped the hills with flame,
The silent forest-boughs were stirred
With music, as from bee and bird,
A mingling murmur came.
From out its depths of tangled gloom
There came a breath of dewy bloom,
And from the valleys dim.

A cloud of fragrant incense stole,
As if each violet breathed its soul
Into that floral hymn.

Loud neighed the steed within his stall,
The cock crowed on the castle wall,.
The warder wound his horn;

The linnet sang in leafy bower,
The swallows twittering from the tower,
Salute the rosy morn.

But fresher than the rosy morn,
And blither than the bugle-horn,

The maiden's heart doth prove,
Who, as her beaming eyes awake,
Beholds a double morning break-
The dawn of light and love!

MEMORY.

AWAKE, my harp, thy sweetest tone,
The loved one of my youth is near;
And though long, weary years have flown,
Her voice as seraph's, sweet and clear-
Like dreamy music soothes my breast,
And claims awhile my soul's unrest.

O, memory brings me back the hours
When life was in its morning bloom!
When every path was strewn with flowers

That shed around their sweet perfumeAnd love beamed forth each new-born day A purer, brighter, holier ray.

The rude seat in the garden cove,

High-arching o'er ancestral trees,-
Here, oft we told our tales of love

Unheard, save by the passing breeze.
I see it now, that mossy seat,
Where we, alas! no more may meet.

The roses and the eglantines,

The mocking-bird upon the bough,

The cottage canopied by vines,

Are present to my fancy now,—

The creepers, with their cups of gold,
And lilies sweet I now behold.

And she, whose golden ringlets streamed
Like sunbeams on a breast of snow:
She whom I fondly, falsely deemed
Mine own by every sacred vow;
She starts before my fancy's sight,
A being from the realms of light.