He woke, he rose, he spread his arms abroad 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. UST are our frames; and, gilded dust, our pride DUST Looks only for a moment whole and sound; Like that long-buried body of the king, Found lying with his urns and ornaments, 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, 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 kingWhose blazing wyvern weathercock'd the spire, Stood from his walls and wing'd his entry-gates And swang besides on many a windy signWhose eyes from under a pyramidal head Saw from his windows nothing save his own— But he that marries her marries her name A land of hops and poppy-mingled corn, A sleepy land where under the same wheel Were open to each other; tho' to dream That Love could bind them closer well had made The hoar hair of the Baronet bristle up With horror, worse than had he heard his priest And might not Averill, had he will'd it so, There was an Aylmer-Averill marriage once, And York's white rose as red as Lancaster's, With wounded peace which each had prick'd to death. 'Not proven' Averill said, or laughingly With Averill, and a year or two before Sanguine he was a but less vivid hue Than of that islet in the chestnut-bloom Flamed in his cheek; and eager eyes, that still Took joyful note of all things joyful, beam'd, Beneath a manelike mass of rolling gold, Their best and brightest, when they dwelt on hers, Edith, whose pensive beauty, perfect else, But subject to the season or the mood, Shone like a mystic star between the less And greater glory varying to and fro, We know not wherefore; bounteously made, And yet so finely, that a troublous touch Thinn'd, or would seem to thin her in a day, A joyous to dilate, as toward the light. And these had been together from the first. Leolin's first nurse was, five years after, hers: So much the boy foreran; but when his date Doubled her own, for want of playmates, he (Since Averill was a decad and a half His elder, and their parents underground) Had tost his ball and flown his kite, and roll'd His hoop to pleasure Edith, with her dipt Against the rush of the air in the prone swing, What look'd a flight of fairy arrows aim'd Or Heav'n in lavish bounty moulded, grew. That soon should wear the garland; there again |