The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wyndham Towers, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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Title: Wyndham Towers

Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Posting Date: November 23, 2008 [EBook #1830]
Release Date: July, 1998

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WYNDHAM TOWERS ***

Produced by Donald Lainson

WYNDHAM TOWERS

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich

TO EDWIN BOOTH.

MY DEAR BOOTH:

In offering these verses to you, I beg you to treat them (as you
have many a time advised a certain lord chamberlain to treat the
players) not according to their desert. "Use them after your own
honor and dignity; the less they deserve, the more merit is in your
bounty."

These many years your friend and comrade,

T. B. ALDRICH.

NOTE

The motif of the story embodied in the following poem was crudely
outlined in a brief sketch printed in an early collection of the
authors verse, and subsequently cancelled for a purpose not until
now accomplished. Wyndham Towers is not to be confused with this
discarded sketch, the text of which has furnished only a phrase, or
an indirect suggestion, here and there. That the writer's method,
when recasting the poem, was more or less influenced by the poets
he had been studying--chiefly the dramatists of the Elizabethan
era--will, he hopes, be obvious. It was part of his design,
however far he may have fallen from it, to give his narrative
something of the atmosphere and color of the period in which the
action takes place, though the story is supposed to be told at a
later date.

WYNDHAM TOWERS.

Before you reach the slender, high-arched bridge,
Like to a heron with one foot in stream,
The hamlet breaks upon you through green boughs--
A square stone church within a place of graves
Upon the slope; gray houses oddly grouped,
With plastered gables set with crossed oak-beams,
And roofs of yellow tile and purplish slate.
That is The Falcon, with the swinging sign
And rustic bench, an ancient hostelry;
Those leaden lattices were hung on hinge
In good Queen Bess's time, so old it is.
On ridge-piece, gable-end, or dove-