Crotchet Castle [44]
He found it at length, and he made its first proof By turning to gold all the lead of his roof: Then he bought some magnanimous heroes, all fire, Who lived but to smite and be smitten for hire.
With these on the plains like a torrent he broke; He filled the whole country with flame and with smoke; He killed all the swine, and he broached all the wine; He drove off the sheep, and the beeves, and the kine;
He took castles and towns; he cut short limbs and lives; He made orphans and widows of children and wives: This course many years he triumphantly ran, And did mischief enough to be called a great man.
When, at last, he had gained all for which he held striven, He bethought him of buying a passport to heaven; Good and great as he was, yet he did not well know, How soon, or which way, his great spirit might go.
He sought the grey friars, who beside a wild stream, Refected their frames on a primitive scheme; The gravest and wisest Gwenwynwyn found out, All lonely and ghostly, and angling for trout.
Below the white dash of a mighty cascade, Where a pool of the stream a deep resting-place made, And rock-rooted oaks stretched their branches on high, The friar stood musing, and throwing his fly.
To him said Gwenwynwyn, "Hold, father, here's store, For the good of the church, and the good of the poor;" Then he gave him the stone; but, ere more he could speak, Wrath came on the friar, so holy and meek.
He had stretched forth his hand to receive the red gold, And he thought himself mocked by Gwenwynwyn the Bold; And in scorn of the gift, and in rage at the giver, He jerked it immediately into the river.
Gwenwynwyn, aghast, not a syllable spake; The philosopher's stone made a duck and a drake; Two systems of circles a moment were seen, And the stream smoothed them off, as they never had been.
Gwenwynwyn regained, and uplifted his voice, "Oh friar, grey friar, full rash was thy choice; The stone, the good stone, which away thou hast thrown, Was the stone of all stones, the philosopher's stone."
The friar looked pale, when his error he knew; The friar looked red, and the friar looked blue; And heels over head, from the point of a rock, He plunged, without stopping to pull off his frock.
He dived very deep, but he dived all in vain, The prize he had slighted he found not again; Many times did the friar his diving renew, And deeper and deeper the river still grew.
Gwenwynwyn gazed long, of his senses in doubt, To see the grey friar a diver so stout; Then sadly and slowly his castle he sought, And left the friar diving, like dabchick distraught.
Gwenwynwyn fell sick with alarm and despite, Died, and went to the devil, the very same night; The magnanimous heroes he held in his pay Sacked his castle, and marched with the plunder away.
No knell on the silence of midnight was rolled For the flight of the soul of Gwenwynwyn the Bold. The brethren, unfeed, let the mighty ghost pass, Without praying a prayer, or intoning a mass.
The friar haunted ever beside the dark stream; The philosopher's stone was his thought and his dream: And day after day, ever head under heels He dived all the time he could spare from his meals.
He dived, and he dived, to the end of his days, As the peasants oft witnessed with fear and amaze. The mad friar's diving-place long was their theme, And no plummet can fathom that pool of the stream.
And still, when light clouds on the midnight winds ride, If by moonlight you stray on the lone river-side, The ghost of the friar may be seen diving there, With head in the water, and heels in the air.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Well, your ballad is very pleasant: you shall show me the scene, and I will sketch it; but just now I am more interested about your love. What heroine of the twelfth century has risen from the ruins of the old castle, and looked down on you from the ivied battlements?
MR. CHAINMAIL. You are nearer the mark than you suppose. Even from those battlements a heroine of the twelfth century has looked down on me.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Oh! some vision