The Project Gutenberg eBook of Death the Knight and the Lady, by H. De Vere Stacpoole.

Lo! where are now these armoured hosts

Mailed for the tourney câp-a-pie,

These dames and damozelles whose ghosts

Make of the past this pagentry?

O sanguine book of History!

Romance with perfume cloaks thy must,

But he who shakes the page may see

—Dust.

Stiff hangs the arras in the gloom;

I turn my head awhile to gaze:

Here lordly stallions fret and fume,

Here streams o'er briar and brake the chase.

Here sounds a horn, here turns a face,

How filled with fires of life and lust!

Wind shakes the arras and betrays

—Dust.

Ephemeral hand inditing this

Great hound that lolls against my knee,

Lips pursed in thought as if to kiss

Regret—full soon the time must be.

When one shall search, but find not ye,

For that dim moth whose labours rust

All forms in time or tapestry

—Dust.

Forth offspring to the perch and then

Clap wings—or fall, if find you must

This saddest fate of books or men

—Dust.

		PAGE
	Ballad of the Arras	vii
	Prologue	1
CHAP.
I.	I describe Myself	11
II.	James Wilder	16
III.	A Sound which reminds me of my Past	27
IV.	Instructions Performed	35
V.	We say Good-bye	38
VI.	—And I Start	42
VII.	North	44
VIII.	The Dimly-painted Face	50
IX.	Geraldine	57
X.	We Meet	72
XI.	The Little Black Book	78
XII.	The Morning	89
XIII.	"You were not dressed like this"	102
XIV.	The Ballade of the Falcon	109
XV.	My Letter	112
XVI.	The Black Horse and the White	121
XVII.	The old oak Chest	126
XVIII.	The Trumpeter	144
XIX.	The Trumpeter	147
XX.	The Ruby Wine	151
XXI.	"And They laid Him to his Rest"	160
XXII.	The End	162

CONTENTS