accidentally burned on the 23d of
January, 1858, a year or two after the first sketch of this ballad was
written. A visit to it was like stepping out of the century into the
years before the Revolution. A new house, similar in plan and
arrangements to the old one, has been built upon its site, and the
terraces, the clump of box, and the lilacs doubtless remain to bear
witness to the truth of this story.

The story, which I have told literally in rhyme, has been made
the subject of a carefully studied and interesting romance by Mr.
E. L. Bynner.

PART FIRST

THE KNIGHT

THE tale I tell is gospel true,
As all the bookmen know,
And pilgrims who have strayed to view
The wrecks still left to show.

The old, old story,--fair, and young,
And fond,--and not too wise,--
That matrons tell, with sharpened tongue,
To maids with downcast eyes.

Ah! maidens err and matrons warn
Beneath the coldest sky;
Love lurks amid the tasselled corn
As in the bearded rye!

But who would dream our sober sires
Had learned the old world's ways,
And warmed their hearths with lawless fires
In Shirley's homespun days?

'T is like some poet's pictured trance
His idle rhymes recite,--
This old New England-born romance
Of Agnes and the Knight;

Yet, known to all the country round,
Their home is standing still,
Between Wachusett's lonely mound
And Shawmut's threefold hill.

One hour we rumble on the rail,
One half-hour guide the rein,
We reach at last, o'er hill and dale,
The village on the plain.

With blackening wall and mossy roof,
With stained and warping floor,
A stately mansion stands aloof
And bars its haughty door.

This lowlier portal may be tried,
That breaks the gable wall;
And lo! with arches opening wide,
Sir Harry Frankland's hall!

'T was in the second George's day
They sought the forest shade,
The knotted trunks they cleared away,
The massive beams they laid,

They piled the rock-hewn chimney tall,
They smoothed the terraced ground,
They reared the marble-pillared wall
That fenced the mansion round.

Far stretched beyond the village bound
The Master's broad domain;
With page and valet, horse and hound,
He kept a goodly train.

And, all the midland county through,
The ploughman stopped to gaze
Whene'er his chariot swept in view
Behind the shining bays,

With mute obeisance, grave and slow,
Repaid by nod polite,--
For such the way with high and low
Till after Concord fight.

Nor less to co