:
It will moreover be a token to her,
That I am he.'
He ceased; and Miriam Lane
Made such a voluble answer promising all,
That once again he roll'd his eyes upon her
Repeating all he wish'd, and once again
She promised.
Then the third night after this,
While Enoch slumber'd motionless and pale,
And Miriam watch'd and dozed at intervals,
There came so loud a calling of the sea,
That all the houses in the haven rang.
He woke, he rose, he spread his arms abroad
Crying with a loud voice 'a sail! a sail!
I am saved'; and so fell back and spoke no more.
So past the strong heroic soul away.
And when they buried him the little port
Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.
AYLMER'S FIELD.
1793.
AYLMER'S FIELD.
1793.
------<>------
Dust are our frames; and gilded dust, our pride
Looks only for a moment whole and sound;
Like that long-buried body of the king,
Found lying with his urns and ornaments,
Which at a touch of light, an air of heaven,
Slipt into ashes and was found no more.
Here is a story which in rougher shape
Came from a grizzled cripple, whom I saw
Sunning himself in a waste field alone--
Old, and a mine of memories--who had served,
Long since, a bygone Rector of the place,
And been himself a part of what he told.
Sir Aylmer Aylmer that almighty man,
The county God--in whose capacious hall,
Hung with a hundred shields, the family tree
Sprang from the midriff of a prostrate king--
Whose blazing wyvern weathercock'd the spire,
Stood from his walls and wing'd his entry-gates
And swang besides on many a windy sign--
Whose eyes from under a pyramidal head
Saw from his windows nothing save his own--
What lovelier of his own had he than her,
His only child, his Edith, whom he loved
As heiress and not heir regretfully?
But 'he that marries her marries her name'
This fiat somewhat soothed himself and wife,
His wife a faded beauty of the Baths,
Insipid as the Queen upon a card;
Her all of thought and bearing hardly more
Than his own shadow in a sickly sun.
A land of hops and poppy-mingled corn,
Little about it stirring save a brook!
A sleepy land where under the same wheel
The same old rut would deepen year by year;
Where almost all the village had one name;
Where Aylmer follow'd Aylmer at the Hall
And Averill
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