The Knight's Epitaph.

This is the church which Pisa, great and free,     Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls,     That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear     To shiver in the deep and voluble tones     Rolled from the organ! Underneath my feet     There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault.     The image of an armed knight is graven     Upon it, clad in perfect panoply,     Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm,     Gauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned shield.     Around, in Gothic characters, worn dim     By feet of worshippers, are traced his name,     And birth, and death, and words of eulogy.     Why should I pore upon them? This old tomb,     This effigy, the strange disused form     Of this inscription, eloquently show     His history. Let me clothe in fitting words     The thoughts they breathe, and frame his epitaph.     "He whose forgotten dust for centuries     Has lain beneath this stone, was one in whom     Adventure, and endurance, and emprise     Exalted the mind's faculties and strung     The body's sinews. Brave he was in fight,     Courteous in banquet, scornful of repose,     And bountiful, and cruel, and devout,     And quick to draw the sword in private feud.     He pushed his quarrels to the death, yet prayed     The saints as fervently on bended knees     As ever shaven cenobite. He loved     As fiercely as he fought. He would have borne     The maid that pleased him from her bower by night,     To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears     His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks     On his pursuers. He aspired to see     His native Pisa queen and arbitress     Of cities: earnestly for her he raised     His voice in council, and affronted death     In battle-field, and climbed the galley's deck,     And brought the captured flag of Genoa back,     Or piled upon the Arno's crowded quay     The glittering spoils of the tamed Saracen.     He was not born to brook the stranger's yoke,     But would have joined the exiles that withdrew     For ever, when the Florentine broke in     The gates of Pisa, and bore off the bolts     For trophies, but he died before that day.     "He lived, the impersonation of an age     That never shall return. His soul of fire     Was kindled by the breath of the rude time     He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds,     Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier,     Turning his eyes from the reproachful past,     And from the hopeless future, gives to ease,     And love, and music, his inglorious life."