Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/197

172 Receive us silently. How grim and gray

Yon tall, steep fortalice above us towers!

Its narrow apertures, like arrow-slits,

Jealous of heaven's sweet air, its dreary rooms

Floored with rough stones, its uncouth passages

Cut in thick walls, bespeak those iron times

Of despotism, when o'er the mountain-surge

Rode the fierce sea-king, and the robber hedged

The chieftain in his moat.

A freer style

Of architecture, clearly as a chart,

Defines the isthmus of that middle state,

After the Conquest, when the Saxon kernes

With their elf-locks receded. Coarsely mixed,

Norman with Gothic, stretch the low-browed halls,

Their open rafters brown with curling smoke.

Hearthstone and larder, as for giant race,

Tell of rude, festal doings, when in state

The stalwart baron, seated on the dais,

Serf and retainer fitly ranged around,

Gave hospitality at Christmas-tide;—

The roasted ox, the boar, with holly crowned,

And mighty venison pasty, proudly borne

'Tween a stout brace of ancient serving-men.

The elements of rude and gentle times

Were ill concocted then, and struggling held

Each other in suspension, or prevailed

Alternately. "Barbaric pearl and gold"

Were roughly set; and cumbrous arras hid

The iron-hasped and loosely-bolted doors.

Broad-branching antlers of the stag were then