# Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands 1842/Kenilworth

KENILWORTH.
I always longed for ruins. When a child,
Living where rifted rocks were plentiful,
I fain would climb amid their slippery steeps,
Shaping them into battlement, and shaft,
And long-drawn corridor, and dungeon-keep,
And haunted hall. Not but our own fresh groves
And lofty forests were all well enough,
But Fancy gadded after other things,
And hinted that a cloistered niche, or roof
Of some grey abbey, with its ivy robe,
Would be a vast improvement. So, I thought
To build a ruin; and have lain awake,
Thinking what stones and sticks I might command,
And how I best could range them, in some nook
Of field or garden. But the years sped on,
And then my castles in the air came down
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 loop-holes grey
Gazed on the fields beneath, and asked a 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
Their lands by their own names?
 Where Cæsar's tower
Hides in a mass of ivy the deep rents
That years have made, methinks we still may see
The watchful warder lay his mace aside,
And through his pent-horn blow a mighty blast,
To warn his master, the good, stalwart knight,
Geoffry de Clinton, that his patron-king,
The Norman Beauclerc, with a hunting train,
Swept o'er the Warwick hills, intent to prove
His hospitality, perchance to explore
His new-reared fortress.
 Let a century pass,—
And from yon bastion, with a fiery glance,
That speaks the restless and vindictive soul,
Simon de Montfort counts his men at arms,
Warning his archers that their bows be strong,
And every arrow sharply ring that day,
Against their lawful sovereign.
 Change hath swept.
With wave on wave the feudal times away,
And from their mightiest fabrics plucked the pride.
The patriarchs, and the men before the flood,
Who trod the virgin greenness of the earth,
While centuries rolled on centuries, dwelt in tents,
And tabernacles, deeming that their date
Was all too short, to entrench themselves, and hold
Successful warfare with oblivious death.
But we, in the full plentitude and hope
Of threescore years and ten, (how oft curtailed!)
Add house to house, and field to field, and heap
Stone upon stone; then shuddering, fall and die:—
While in our footsteps climb another race,
Graves all around them, and the booming knell
Forever in their ears.
 The humbling creed,
That all is vanity, doth force a way
Into the gayest heart, that trusts itself
To ruminate amid these buried wrecks
Of princely splendor and baronial pomp.
Methinks the spirit of true wisdom loves
To haunt such musing shades. The taller plants
Sigh to the lowly ones, and they again
Give lessons to the grass, and now and then
Shake a sweet dewdrop on it, to reward
Its docile temper; while each leaf imprints
Its tender moral on the passer-by,—
"Ye all, like us, must fade."
 Here comes a bee,
From yon forsaken bower, as if to watch
Our piracies upon her honey-cups,
Perchance, with sting to guard them. Light of wing!
Hast e'er a hive amid those tangled boughs?
We 'll not invade thy secrecy, nor thin
Thy scanty hoard of flowers. Let them bloom on;
Why should we rob the desert of a gem,
Which God hath set, to help its poverty?
It seems like an illusion still, to say,
I've been at Kenilworth. But yet 't is true.
And when once more I reach my pleasant home,
In Yankee land, should conversation flag
Among us ladies, though it seldom does,
When of our children, and our housekeeping,
And help we speak, yet should there be a pause,
I will bethink me in that time of need
To mention Kenilworth, and such a host
Of questions will rain down, from those who read
Scott's wizard pages, as will doubtless make
The precious tide of talk run free again.
And when I'm sitting in my grandame chair,
If e'er I live such honored place to fill,
I'll hush the noisy young ones, should they tease
And trouble their Mamma, with sugared bribes
Of tales from Kenilworth.
Monday, Oct. 12, 1840.
Masses of luxuriant ivy clasped and enfolded the crumbled walls and mouldering turrets of Kenilworth, which once resounded with the revels of nobility and royalty. I was not prepared to find it so entire a ruin. The absence of all living inhabitants must plead my excuse for seeking an interview with its founder, Geoffry de Clinton, the clear-minded and plain-spoken knight, who was so often favored in his fortalice with a visit from the courtly monarch, Henry the First; as well as for imagining, on yonder broken heights, the lofty form and frowning features of Simon de Montfort, who, scarcely a century after, summoned his retainers, and led the malcontent barons to the battle-field against his sovereign, Henry the Third.