The Vigil of Arms. [380]
A sounding step was heard by night
In a church where the mighty slept,
As a mail-clad youth, till morning’s light,
Midst the tombs his vigil kept.
He walk’d in dreams of power and fame,
He lifted a proud bright eye,
For the hours were few that withheld his name
From the roll of chivalry.
Down the moonlit aisles he paced alone,
With a free and stately tread;
And the floor gave back a muffled tone
From the couches of the dead:
The silent many that round him lay,
The crown’d and helm’d that were,
The haughty chiefs of the war array—
Each in his sepulchre!
But no dim warning of time or fate
That youth’s flush’d hopes could chill;
He moved through the trophies of buried state
With each proud pulse throbbing still.
He heard, as the wind through the chancel sung,
A swell of the trumpet’s breath;
He look’d to the banners on high that hung,
And not to the dust beneath.
And a royal masque of splendour seem’d
Before him to unfold;
Through the solemn arches on it stream’d,
With many a gleam of gold:
There were crested knight, and gorgeous dame,
Glittering athwart the gloom;
And he follow’d, till his bold step came
To his warrior-father’s tomb.
But there the still and shadowy might
Of the monumental stone,
And the holy sleep of the soft lamp’s light
That over its quiet shone,
And the image of that sire, who died
In his noonday of renown—
These had a power unto which the pride
Of fiery life bow’d down.
And a spirit from his early years
Came back o’er his thoughts to move,
Till his eye was fill’d with memory’s tears,
And his heart with childhood’s love!
And he look’d, with a change in his softening glance,
To the armour o’er the grave—
For there they hung, the shield and lance,
And the gauntlet of the brave.
And the sword of many a field was there,
With its cross for the hour of need,
When the knight’s bold war-cry hath sunk in prayer,
And the spear is a broken reed!
—Hush! did a breeze through the armour sigh?
Did the folds of the banner shake?
Not so!—from the tomb’s dark mystery
There seem’d a voice to break!
He had heard that voice bid clarions blow,
He had caught its last blessing’s breath—
’Twas the same—but its awful sweetness now
Had an under-tone of death!
And it said—“The sword hath conquer’d kings,
And the spear through realms hath pass’d;
But the cross, alone, of all these things,
Might aid me at the last.”
[380] The candidate for knighthood was under the necessity of keeping watch, the night before his inauguration, in a church, and completely armed. This was called “the Vigil of Arms.”