KENIL WORTH. 201
So fast, and fell in such fantastic forms At every step, that I was satisfied, And never built a ruin.
When at last,
I roamed among the wrecks of Kenilworth, Assured my feet were on the very spot Where haughty Dudley, for the haughtier queen, Enacted such a show of chivalry As turned the tissues of Arabia pale, I lingered there, and through the loopholes gray Gazed on the fields beneath, and asked some tale Of what they might remember. The coarse grass, Fed in the stagnant marsh, perked up its head As though it fain would gossip ; but no breeze Gave it a tongue.
Where is thy practised strain Of mirth and revelry, O Kenilworth ! Banquet and wassail-bowl, and tournament, And incense offered to the gods of earth ? The desolation, that befel of yore The cities of the plain, hath found thee out, And quelled thy tide of song.
Deserted pile !
Sought they, who reared thee, for a better house Not made with hands ? Or, by thy grandeur lured, Dreamed they to live forever, and to call These lands by their own names ?
Where Caesar s tower Hides in a mass of ivy the deep rents That years have made, methinks we still may see
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