FullReads

The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
An oak stood where an acorn tumbled once,
Ages ago, and all the world was strange.
Now, in that year King Charles the Second left
Forever the soft arms of Mistress Gwynn
And wrapt him in that marble where he lies,
The moulder’d pile with its entombed Crime
Passed to the keep of a brave new-fledged lord,
Who, liking much the sane and wholesome air
That bent the boughs and fanned the turret’s top,
Cried, “Here dwell I!” So fell it on a day
The stroke of mallets and the screech of saws
In those bleak chambers made such din as stopped
The careful spider half-way up his thread,
And panic sent to myriad furtive things
That dwelt in wainscots and loved not the sun.
Vainly in broken phalanx clamorous
Did the scared rooks protest, and all in vain
The moths on indolent white damask wings
At door and casement rallied. Wyndham Towers
Should have a bride, and ghosts had word to quit.

And now, behold what strange thing came to pass.
A certain workman, in the eastern wing
Plying his craft alone as the day waned–
One Gregory Nokes, a very honest soul,
By trade wood-carver–stumbled on a door
Leading to nowhere at an alcove’s end,
A double door that of itself swung back
In such strange way as no man ever saw;
And there, within a closet, on the flags
Were two grim shapes which, vaguely seen at first
In the half light, grew presently distinct–
Two gnomes or vampires seemed they, or dire imps
Straight from the Pit, in guise fantastical
Of hose and doublet: one stretched out full length
Supine, and one in terror-stricken sort
Half toppled forward on the bended knee,
Grasping with vise-like grip the other’s wrist,
As who should say, Arouse thee, sleep no more!
But said it not. If they were quick or dead,
No sign they gave beyond this sad dumb show.
Blurred one face was, yet luminous, like the moon
Caught in the fleecy network of a cloud,
Or seen glassed on the surface of a tarn
When the wind crinkles it and makes all dim;
The other, drawn and wrenched by mortal throes,
And in the aspect such beseeching look
As might befall some poor wretch called to compt
On the sudden, even as he kneels at prayer,
With Mercy! turned to frost upon the lip.

Thus much saw Nokes within the closet there
Ere he drew breath; then backing step by step,
The chisel clutched in still uplifted hand,
His eyes still fixed upon the ghosts, he reached
An open window giving on the court
Where the stone-cutters were; to them he called
Softly, in whispers under his curved palm,
Lest peradventure a loud word should rouse
The phantoms; but ere foot could climb the stair,
Or the heart’s pulses count the sum of ten,
Through both dread shapes, as at God’s finger-touch,
A shiver ran, the wavering outlines broke,
And suddenly a chill and mist-like breath
Touched Nokes’s cheek as he at casement leaned,
And nought was left of that most piteous pair
Save two long rapiers of some foreign make
Lying there crossed, a mass of flaky rust.

O luckless carver of dead images,
Saint’s-head or gargoyle, thou hast seen a sight
Shall last thee to the confines of the grave!
Ill were thy stars or ever thou wert born
That thou shouldst look upon a thing forbid!
Now in thine eye shall it forever live,
And the waste solitudes of night inhabit
With direful shadows of the nether world,
Yet leave thee lonely in the throng of men–
Not of them, thou, but creature set apart
Under a ban, and doomed henceforth to know
The wise man’s scorn, the dull man’s sorry jest.
For who could credence give to that mad tale
Of churchyard folk appearing in broad day,
And drifting out at casement like a mist?
Marry, not they who crowded up the stair
In haste, and peered into that empty cell,
And had half mind to buffet Master Nokes,
Standing with finger laid across his palm
In argumentative, appealing way,
Distraught, of countenance most woe-begone.
“See!–the two swords. As I ‘m a Christian soul!”
“Odds, man!” cried one, “thou ‘st been a-dreamin’, man.
Cleave to thy beer, an’ let strong drink alone!”

So runs the legend. So from their long sleep
Those ghosts arose and fled into the night.
But never bride came to that dark abode,
For wild flames swept it ere a month was gone,
And nothing spared but that forlorn old tower
Whereon the invisible fingers of the wind
Its fitful and mysterious dirges play.