Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/225

 200 ANCIENT BARONS.

motion, led to a musing interview with those who peopled it of old. Before me, suddenly seemed to stand its founder, stout Geoffry de Clinton, the clear- minded, plain-spoken knight, who to the rude hospital ities of his fortalice so often allured the courtly mon arch, Henry Beauclerc.

Anon, the scene changes. A century has passed away. Over yon broken heights, the towering form and frowning brow of Simon de Montfort sweeps, with his retainers, summoning the malcontent barons to up hold the rebellion of his ambitious father, the Earl of Leicester, against King Henry the Third.

��I always longed for ruins. When a child,

Living where rifted rocks were plentiful,

I fain would climb amid their slippery steeps,

Shaping them into battlement, and shaft,

And long-drawn corridor, and dungeon-keep,

And haunted hall. Not but our own fresh groves

And lofty forests were all well enough,

But Fancy gadded after other things,

And hinted that a cloistered niche, or roof

Of some gray abbey, with its ivy robe,

&quot;Would be a vast improvement. So, I thought

To build a ruin ; and have lain awake,

Thinking what stones and sticks I might command.

And how to arrange them fitly in some nook

Of field or garden. But the years sped on,

And then my castles in the air came down

�� �