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A footfall on the shingle walk below
Grated, a footfall light as Mercury’s
Disdaining earth, and Wyndham in the dark,
Half crouched upon the settle with his nails
Indenting the soft wood-work, held his breath.
Then suddenly a blind rage like a flame
Swept over him and hurled him to his feet–
Such rage as must have seized the soul of Cain
Meeting his brother in the stubble-field.
Anon came one that hummed a blithe sea-song,
As he were fresh from tavern and brave cheer,
And held the stars that blinked there in the blue
Boon comrades. Singing in high-hearted way,
His true-love’s kiss a memory on his lip,
Straight on he came to unrenowned end
Whose dream had been in good chain-mail to die
On some well-foughten field, at set of sun,
With glorious peal of trumpets on his ear
Proclaiming victory. So had he dreamed.
And there, within an arch at the stair-top
And screened behind a painted hanging-cloth
Of coiled gold serpents ready to make spring,
Ignoble Death stood, his convulsive hand
Grasping a rapier part-way down the blade
To deal the blow with deadly-jewelled hilt–
Black Death, turned white with horror of himself.
Straight on came he that sang the blithe sea-song;
And now his step was on the stair, and now
He neared the blazoned hanging-cloth, and now…

The lights were out, and all life lay in trance
On floor or pallet, blanketed to chin,
Each in his mask of sullen-seeming death–
Fond souls that recked not what was in the air,
Else had the dead man’s scabbard as it clashed
Against the balustrade, then on the tiles,
Brought awkward witness. One base hind there was
Had stolen a venison-pasty on the shelf,
And now did penance; him the fall half roused
From dreadful nightmare; once he turned and gasped,
Then straightway snored again. No other sound
Within the dream-enchanted house was heard,
Save that the mastiff, lying at the gate
With visionary bone, snarled in his sleep.
Secret as bridal-kiss may murder be,

Done was the deed that could not be undone
Throughout eternity. O silent tongue
That would blab all with silence! What to do?
How hide this speechless witness from men’s gaze?
Living, that body vexed us; being dead
‘T is like to give us trouble and to spare.
O for a cavern in deep-bowelled earth!
Quick, ere the dusky petals of the night
Unclosing bare the fiery heart of dawn
And thus undo us with its garish light,
Let us this mute and pale accusing clay
In some undreamed-of sepulchre bestow,
But where? Hold back thy fleet-wing’d coursers, Time,
Whilst we bethink us! Ah–such place there is!
Close, too, at hand–a place wherein a man
Might lie till doomsday safer from the touch
Of prying clown than is the spiced dust
Of an Egyptian in his pyramid.

At a dark alcove’s end of that long hall,
The ancient armor-room in the east wing,
A certain door (whereof no mortal knew
save Wyndham, now that other lay a-cold)
Was to the panels of the wall so set,
And with such devilish shrewdness overlaid
By carvings of wild-flower and curled grape-leaf,
That one not in the favor of the trick,
Albeit he knew such mechanism was,
Ere he put finger on the secret spring
Had need of Job for ancestor, in faith!
You pressed a rose, a least suspected rose,
And two doors turned on hinge, the inner door
Closing a space of say some six feet square,
Unlighted, sheathed with iron. Doubtless here
The mediaeval Wyndhams hid their plate
When things looked wicked from the outer wall,
Or, on occasion, a grim ruthless lord
Immured some inconvenient two-faced friend–
To banquet bidden, and kept over night.
Such pranks were played in Merrie England then.
Sealed in the narrow compass of that cell,
Shut from God’s light and his most precious air,
A man might have of life a half-hour’s lease
If he were hale and well-breathed at the start.