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The blackthorn bloomed anew, and the long grass
Was starred with flowers that once Griselda prized,
But plucked not. She, poor wench, from moon to moon
Waxed pale and paler: of no known disease,
The village-leech averred, with lips pursed out
And cane at chin; some inward fire, he thought,
Consumed. A dark inexplicable blight
Had touched her, thinned her, till of that sweet earth
Scarce more was left than would have served to grow
A lily. Later, at a fresh-turned grave,
From out the maiden strewments, as it were,
A whisper rose, of most pathetic breath,
Of how one maid had been by two men loved–
No names, God’s mercy!–and that neither man
Would wed her: why?–conjecture faltered there,
For whiter was she than new-drifted snow,
Or bleached lamb’s wool, or any purest thing,
Such stuff in sooth as Heaven shapes angels of;
And how from their warm, comfortable beds
These two men wandered out into the night,
Sore stricken and distempered in their mind,
And being by Satan blinded and urged on
Did fling them headlong from a certain crag
That up Clovelly way o’erhangs the sea–
O’erhangs the sea to tempt unhappy folk.
From door to door the piteous legend passed,
And like a thrifty beggar took from each.
And when the long autumnal season came
To that bleak, bitter coast, and when at night
The deep was shaken, and the pent cloud broke
Crashing among the lurid hills of heaven,
And in brief sudden swoonings of the gale
Contentious voices rose from the sand-dunes,
Then to low sobs and murmurs died away,
The fishwives, with their lean and sallow cheeks
Lit by the flickering driftwood’s ruddy glow,
Drew closer to the crane, and under breath
To awestruck maidens told the fearful tale.

The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
‘T was said that once the Queen reached out her hand–
This was at Richmond in her palace there–
And let it rest on Burleigh’s velvet sleeve,
And spoke–right stately was she in her rouge:
“Prithee, good Master Cecil, tell us now
Was ‘t ever known what ill befell those men,
Those Wyndhams? Were they never, never found?
Look you, ‘t will be three years come Michaelmas:
‘T were well to have at least the bones of them.
‘Fore God, sir! this is something should be seen!
When the Armada, which God smote and sunk,
Threatened our Realm, our buckler and our shield
Were such stout hearts as that young Wyndham was.
The elder brother–well, Heaven fashioned him.
Our subjects are our subjects, mark you that.
Not found, forsooth! Why, then, they should be found!”
Fain had my good Lord Burleigh solved the thing,
And smoothed that ominous wrinkle on the brow
Of her Most Sweet Imperious Majesty.
Full many a problem his statecraft had solved–
How strangle treason, how soothe turbulent peers,
How foil the Pope and Spain, how pay the Fleet–
Mere temporal matters; but this business smelt
Strongly of brimstone. Bring back vanished folk!
That could not Master Cecil an he would.

The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
Dark were the days that came to Wyndham Towers
With that grim secret rusting in its heart.
On the sea’s side along the fissured wall
The lichen spread in patches of dull gold
Up to the battlements, at times assailed
By sheeted ghosts of mist blown from the sea,
Now by the whistling arrows of the sleet
Pelted, and thrice of lightning scorched and seamed,
But stoutly held from dreary year to year
By legions of most venerable rooks,
Shrill black-robed prelates of the fighting sort.
In the wide moat, run dry with summer droughts
Great scarlet poppies lay in drifts and heaps,
Like bodies fall’n there in some vain assault.
Within, decay and dolor had their court–
Dolor, decay, and silence, lords of all.
From room to room the wind went shuddering
On some vague endless quest; now pausing here
To lift an arras, and then hurrying on,
To some fresh clue, belike! The sharp-nosed mouse
Through joist and floor discreetly gnawed her way,
And for her glossy young a lodging made
In a cracked corselet that once held a heart.
The meditative spider undisturbed
Wove his gray tapestry from sill to sill.
Over the transom the stone eagle drooped,
With one wing gone, in most dejected state
Moulting his feathers. A blue poisonous vine,
Whose lucent berry, hard as Indian jade,
No squirrel tried his tooth on, June by June
On the south hill-slope festered in the sun.
Man’s foot came not there. It was haunted ground.