Page:Pleasant Memories.pdf/202

Assured my feet were on the very spot,
Where haughty Dudley for the haughtier queen
Enacted such a show of chivalry,
As turned the tissues of Arabia pale.
I lingered there, and through the loop-holes grey
Gazed on the fields beneath, and asked a tale
Of what they might remember. The coarse grass
Fed in the stagnant marsh perked up its head,
As though it fain would gossip; but no breeze
Gave it a tongue.
                        Where is thy practised strain
Of mirth and revelry, O Kenilworth!
Banquet, and wassail-bowl, and tournament,
And incense offered to the gods of earth?
The desolation, that befel of yore
The cities of the plain, hath found thee out,
And quelled thy tide of song.
                                           Deserted pile!
Sought they, who reared thee, for a better house
Not made with hands? Or by thy grandeur lured,
Dreamed they to live forever, and to call
Their lands by their own names?
                                           Where Cæsar's tower
Hides in a mass of ivy the deep rents
That years have made, methinks we still may see
The watchful warder lay his mace aside,
And through his pent-horn blow a mighty blast,
To warn his master, the good, stalwart knight,
Geoffry de Clinton, that his patron-king,