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All these the Prince passed by with stealthy tread
As on he sped,
Until he reached the grandest room of all,
The banquet-hall,
Where on the board a mighty feast was spread.
But since the day when first that cloth was laid
Time had strange havoc made
With dish and dainty on the board arrayed;
Had played strange tricks
With those—some five or six—
People of station
Who had been favoured with an invitation
To dinner with the ruler of the nation;
In short, to no conclusion harsh to jump, any
Person of taste
Had thought the King disgraced,
Not only by his room, but by his company.
Vast mushrooms, spawn of hideous dreams,
Had quickened in the rotting seams,
And dusty cobwebs huge,
Wherein did bloated spiders lie,
And feign to sleep, were hung on high;
But there was neither gnat nor fly
To catch by subterfuge.
The very mice had fallen asleep
That ventured in that hall to creep.
And where the sun athwart the gloom
Poured through the pane
A glittering lane
Like Dreamland’s golden bridge,
You looked for stir of life in vain,
Because the very midge
Slept in that drowsy room,
As silent as the tomb!
The King—with half-way to his lips the beaker,
And head half turning to the latest speaker—
Presiding o’er his banquet, slumbered there-amid.
Like the first Pharaoh sleeping in his pyramid;
While the Prime Minister, acute and wise,
Still saw what must be done with fast-shut eyes,
And, as behoved him in the royal presence,
Kept nodding to his Sovereign acquiescence.
The Treasurer and Chancellor of Exchequer
Was bolt upright, as trim as a three-decker.
For raising coin and borrowing he was meant,
And nobody could ever say he leant To right or left,
E’en when of sense bereft.
The Secretary, Foreign and Domestic,
Upright did less stick,
And, being long accustomed to indite,
Inclined to right.
Beside the door a sentry
Stood like the Roman soldier in the entry
Discovered in the ruins of Pompeii,
(Or Herculaneum—which was’t? You see, I
Have got no book of reference at all
Here in the country, not e’en what we’ll call,
For sake of rhyme, a classical invént’ry.
At any rate, he stood
There like a thing of wood;
And by his side did stand,
Salver in hand,
A servitor whose duty was to cater
With flagons, flasks, and bowls
For all the thirsty souls—
(He’s called a buttery-man at Alma Mater)—
Well! There this lad of liquor
Remained a sticker
Against the stair-foot, with his laden tray
Of claret, sherry, Burgundy, Tokay,
And other wines we ’ll call et cætera—
Just like a very image or dumb-waiter.
Another ’mid the goblets lay a-sprawl—
It made the young Prince think
Him overcome with drink,
Which really had not been the case ‘at all.
O ercome he was there’s no denying, but
’T was only sleep; for though the glass was cut,
He was not even blown—
He could have shown
He did not owe to any drop his fall.
Through every tiny crevice, nook, and cranny,
Heaven knows how many
Of every kind of creeping plant had sprouted
And grown and wandered since,
Till the young Prince
If he were in—or out—of doors half doubted.
The clinging tendrils,
Which Nature (as an officer his men drills)
Had taught to turn one way, enwound and bound
The silent sleepers who all slept so sound.
One trailer formed a sort of chain between
The foremost Maid of Honour and the Queen,
As if to say
To those who sleeping lay,
“It’s time to rise, good sirs, and go away”—
In short, the very same remark that made is
By stingy hosts who save their wines by dint
Of the discourteous hint,
“Come, don’t you think it’s time to join the ladies?”
The young Prince gazed
Upon the scene amazed.
He shouted; not a single head was raised—
No single sound upon the silence broke—
Nobody spoke—
All heads alike were bowed.
He shouted loud
As one who wishes to outroar a crowd;
But not a word
He heard—
No creature stirred:
The situation really seemed absurd.
There lay the feast
Untouched for years at least;
And though they’d sat so long,
Not one of all the throng—
Of feeding seemed inclined to be beginner,
And there was the young Prince,
Dropt in some minutes since,
And making such a din
Since he’d come in,
That he became for them another dinner.
At last tired out,
Of vain attempts by shout,
And even shake, to rout
From their deep sleep the slumberers about
The banquet-table,—
Whether he’d be able
Ever to wake them, feeling quite in doubt,
The Prince made up his mind
To leave them all behind,
And see if some one waking he could find,
And so passed on through halls and quiet cloisters,
But everywhere found people mute as oysters
And sound as tops.
But yet he never stops,
Though neither man nor woman, girl nor boy stirs.
All is as still as death,
And not a breath
Stirs the ancestral banners or the arras;
No page’s voice or groom’s
Heard in the rooms,
No maid’s shrill tongue the listener’s ear to harass;
No step upon the stair,
No footfall anywhere,
Not e’en on what Jane Housemaid calls the tarrace.
But still the Prince his onward course pursued,
Half fearing to intrude,
As each fresh chamber doubtfully he stept in.
In tiring-rooms he views
The ladies’ maids so tired they ‘re in a snooze.
Then for a change
Through sleeping-rooms he ’ll range,
Which by some contradiction very strange
Appear the only rooms that are not slept in.
Yet onward still he strays
All undecided,
And yet his steps are guided;
For round his head on airy pinion plays
A band of Fays,
Who lead him forward still by devious ways,
To where the Sleeping Beauty lies,
O’er whose tender violet eyes
For such years the lids have closed,
On her couch while she reposed.
“Come away!” sang each Fay,
“Now we hail the happy day
When the Prince shall break the spell
Spoken by old Spite the fell.
Now sing we merrily,
For the destined one is he!”
Thus all gladly sung the Fays,
Though he could not hear their lays,
Wandering on as in a maze.
Last he reached a silent chamber,
Where through all the woodbine’s clamber,
And the roses’ red profusion,
And the jasmine’s silver stars,
Glowed the glorious sun’s intrusion—
Misty golden bars,
Touching all with amber.
But—or e’er that room he entered
Where the magic all was centred,
For a space, in wonder, dumbly
Gazed he on that figure comely
Sleeping in the snowy bed,
Where the sunshine splendour shed
From the casement’s pictured pane
Crimson, blue, and yellow stain
In a variegated rain.
(Not all colours, as we know,
That in painted windows glow
Can the sun contrive to throw—
Primal tints, red, yellow, indigo,
Will, however, through a “windy” go.)
One moment on the threshold—
One moment and no more!
So like a thing of dreams
And Fairyland she seems,
That he must pause till time his breath restore,
And he of life take fresh hold—
One moment and no more—
And then across the room he bounded
To that white bed by clustering bloom surrounded—
Across the startled floor,
Whence foot had been estranged so long before,
The frightened echoes that his step awoke
Seemed shrieking out to hear when silence broke!
In her bed, as white as snow,
Softly had she slumbered,
While old Time with silent flow
Had the long years numbered.
Quiet as the dead she lay,
Sleeping all those years away
On her pillow, woodbine-cumbered,
Wreathed with flowering may.
And her breath so softly slips
Through the rosy-tinted lips,
That the white lace seems to rest
Moveless on her whiter breast—
That it scarce appears to stir
One of all the fluttering motes
That, in love to look at her,
Glitter down the golden lanes
That the sun pours through the panes,
Bright with armour-coats.