Classic Poem

Have you seen the wight, as you may perchance,
Ycleped the Genius of Romance?
He has travell'd every inch of ground,
In the whole of merry England round;
Has been to Italy, France, and Spain,
And was very glad to return again;
Till at length he took a notion to come
And see brother Jonathan's notions at home.

He considers the world as a masquerade,
Where all kinds of tricks may be lawfully play'd;
And many a mask he has donn'd and tried,
But his changeable phiz he could never hide.
Of mystery, scheming, and sentiment, full,
He has long been a favorite of old Johnny Bull,
And the very worst scrape in which ever he got,
He was glad to get out of by paying his Scott .

A giant of old, in some castle vast,
Far off, in a forest or desert waste,
He would rouse some knight, with enchanted horn,
To rue the day that he ever was born:
For a blow of the giant's ponderous mace
Would fell the knight errant flat on his face;
And a fiery dragon winged for flight
Bear the shrieking damsel away from sight.

Next he came as a goblin grim,
When the castle-halls at eve grew dim;
And many a scream or dismal groan,
At midnight he utter'd from dungeon lone;
Or a pale sad spectre robed in white,
From a gloomy niche he would rise upright;
While the lamps burnt dim with a spectral hue,
And the warder totter'd aghast at the view.

Then forth he stalk'd with a murderer's scowl,
Disguised and muffled in cassock and cowl;
He knew a false pannel that softly might slide,
He drew his dagger and push'd it aside,
He enter'd the chamber, and warily crept
To the side of the bed where the innocent slept;
He drew the curtain that shelter'd his guest,
And plunged the sharp dagger full deep in his breast.

Anon he appear'd as an orphan maid,
In beauty's purity all array'd;
By some true lover faithfully woo'd,
By lawless passion madly pursued;
Oppress'd by want and the tempter's power,
With naught but virtue for shield and dower;
Till Heaven, propitious to her distress,
Restored her to love and happiness.

Again, he sprung up, as a random shoot,
A generous scion from noble root,
With faults and foibles like other youth,
But his heart the fountain and mirror of truth.
Who loved and suffer'd, repented and err'd,
Still by his mistress excused and preferr'd,
Till at length, succeeding to title and land,
The friends of the maiden concede him her hand.

And now he came mask'd as the Great Unknown,
In a thousand shapes that were all his own;
Now as the Temple's proudest knight,
Rushing forth to the panoplied fight;
As the chieftain now that is true in death,
To his king and clan, to his friends and faith;
Or the haughtiest noble that bends the knee
To the brightest of England's royalty.

Risen again, he appear'd to view,
In many a mask of a sombre hue;
Haunting the market, fair, or race;
Sallying forth from his hiding-place; —
By evil example led astray,
A gentleman styled on the king's highway;
Disown'd and neglected by kin and kind,
His home and companions he soon left behind.

At length he roved in the Western wild,
In dress and simplicity Nature's child;
O'er verdant prairie or mountain brown,
Far from the hum of the busy town;
Till he heard the woodman's axe resound
In the midst of the Indian's hunting-ground,
Then bent his way to a wilder sod,
Where the white man's foot had never trod.