And we were there; with a led horse too; Armed for a journey--I hardly knew Whither, but why, you well may guess. For often he whispered a certain name, The talisman dear of his happiness, That warmed his blood like a Yule-log's flame. While we waited there, till its owner came, We saw how the castle's baronial girth, Like a giant's, loosed for revelling more, Shone; and we heard the wassail and mirth Where the mistletoe hung in the hearth's red roar, And the holly brightened the weaponed wall Of carven oak in the banqueting hall. And the spits, I trow, by the scullions turned O'er the snoring logs, rich steamed and burned, Where the whole wild-boar and the deer were roasted, And the half of an ox and the roe-buck's haunches; While tuns of ale, that the cellars boasted, And casks of sack, were broached for paunches Of vassals who revelled in stable and hall. The song of the minstrel; the yeomen's quarrel O'er the dice and the drink; and the huntsman's bawl In the baying kennels, its hounds a-snarl O'er the bones of the feast; now loud, now low, We could hear where we crouched in the drifting snow.
Was she long? did she come?... By the postern we Like shadows waited. My lord, Sir Hugh, Spoke, pointing a tower: "That casement, see? When a stealthy light in its slit burns blue And signals thrice slowly, thus--'tis she." And close to his breast his gaberdine drew, For the wind it whipped and the snow beat through. Did she come?--We had waited an hour or twain, When the taper flashed in the central pane, And flourished three times and vanished so. And under the arch of the postern's portal, Crouched down by the horses we stood in the snow, Stiff with the cold.--Ah, me! immortal Minutes we waited, breath-bated, and listened Shivering there in the hurl of the gale: The parapets whistled, the angles glistened, And the night around seemed one black wail Of death, whose ominous presence over The snow-swept battlements seemed to hover. Said my lord, Sir Hugh,--to himself he spoke,-- "She feels for the spring in the sliding panel 'Neath the arras, hid in the carven oak. It opens. The stair, like a well's dark channel, Yawns, and the draught makes her taper slope. Wrapped deep in her mantle of fur, she puts One foot on the stair: now a listening pause As nearer and nearer the mad search draws Of the thwarted castle. No smallest hope That they find her now that the panel shuts! If the wind, that howls like a tortured thing, Would throttle itself with its cries, then I Might hear how her hurrying footsteps ring Down the secret ... there! 'tis her fingers try The postern's bolts that the rust makes cling."-- But 'twas only some whim of the wind that shook A clanging ring on a creaking hook In the buttress or wall. And we waited, numb With the cold, till dawn--but she did not come.