When day is done, and clouds are low,
And flowers are honey-dew,
And Vesper's lamp begins to burn
Along the western blue,
And homeward wing the turtle-doves,
Then comes the hour the minstrel loves.
*****
(The reason for the asterisks remains unexplained they seem merely a little overflow of incoherence).
And still as shakes the sudden breeze,
The forest's deepening shade,
He hears on Tuscan evening seas
The silver serenade;
Or to the field of battle borne,
Swells at the sound of trump and horn.
The 'swelling' minstrel goes through other rather chaotic experiences, rising to a vision of bishops 'round the altars pale', and ending in a gentle impropriety:
Or sees the dark-eyed nuns of Spain,
Bewitching, blooming, young, in vain.
Here follow fresh asterisks, but they are perhaps more in place. For the author is a clergyman, the Rev. George Croly,[1] and there is a certain wistfulness in the last lines which almost exalts it into poetry. But there is about all the minstrel's dreams a flavour, as it were of strong innocent claret cup, drunk rather too quickly at an afternoon party. There is no reason why the seas should be Tuscan, Tuscany being scant of seaboard, or why the serenade should be silver, except for the sake of alliteration. Holland's sonnet on Chatsworth can boast of a more pompous vagueness:
Stranger, who ramblest here, say, dost thou seek
Some gem of art midst Nature's wonders laid?
Look down that river-cleft tree-tufted glade—
Yon mansion is the palace of the Peak!
How tall the linden trees—the deer how sleek—
