Death the Knight and the Lady

A Ghost Story

(1897)

BALLAD OF THE ARRAS

Lo! where are now these armoured hosts
Mailed for the tourney câp-a-pie,
These dames and damozelles whose ghosts
Make of the past this pagentry?

O sanguine book of History!
Romance with perfume cloaks thy must,
But he who shakes the page may see
—Dust.

Stiff hangs the arras in the gloom;
I turn my head awhile to gaze:
Here lordly stallions fret and fume,
Here streams o'er briar and brake the chase.

Here sounds a horn, here turns a face,
How filled with fires of life and lust!
Wind shakes the arras and betrays
—Dust.

Ephemeral hand inditing this
Great hound that lolls against my knee,
Lips pursed in thought as if to kiss
Regret—full soon the time must be.

When one shall search, but find not ye,
For that dim moth whose labours rust
All forms in time or tapestry
—Dust.

Forth offspring to the perch and then
Clap wings—or fall, if find you must
This saddest fate of books or men
—Dust.

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