There they left him; but at mid-day came, and, beckoning, bade him forth To journey, not as he was wont to, from his ancient honored hearth: To an armed guard they gave him, and amid their stern array, Haughty, lofty-souled and silent Roland sternly rode away. PART III. When the gathering gloom of night in swarthy shadows floated down On the mountain and the forest, Roland saw the distant town: O'er its walls, and round its towers, a dim and sickly lustre lay. Like the gray and ghostly haze that heraldeth the dawning day. While, behind those walls and turrets, standing blackly in her light, Full and large the lurid moon rose ghastily upon the night; Shrouded in a cloud of crimson, slowly, slowly as he came Rising higher, higher, higher, till the east was full of flame. As his guards approached the gates--did she sink or did they rise? Behind the black gigantic towers the planet vanished from his eyes. All without was solemn blackness, but within was drearier dark, Save when from some grim old building stole a taper's trembling spark. Slowly through the lengthy streets, between old houses, rising high, Over which, dark, dusk, sepulchral, bent the purple pall-like sky, Through the town they bore him on, until frowningly, at last, Rose the castle-walls before them, huge and massy, broad and vast. With a last look on the heavens, the knight rode on beneath the gate: Stepping from his steed he bowed him, stately, to his fearful fate: On his limbs they fastened fetters, cold! how cold! their chillness ran Freezing through his blood, the spirit of the stern, unconquered man. Through a gallery they led him to a dark and dismal cell. Where they left him. Sad and solemn, heavy, awful as a knell, Seemed the fading of their footsteps, as he heard them slowly glide Through the long and vaulted corridor till their very echo died. Days went by--days dark with anguish, for his conscience, like a spur, Drove him o'er the wastes of memory which were never black before; Weeks slid by, and months--such months! such bitter months of pungent pain, That their very hours seemed serpents gnawing at his heart and brain. Next they led him forth to trial: like a child he bowed and went, With his once black hair like snow, and his stalwart form so bent, And his beard so long and white, and his cheek so thin and wan, Even his very keepers thought it was a ghost they gazed upon! When before his ermined judges, stately, silent, Roland came, Over his cheek there flashed and faded, suddenly, a flash of flame: Like a falling star it faded: lofty and erect he turned, With the feeling that aroused it under his iron Will inurned. "Roland, Baron Grey!" the crier, in the ancient Latin tongue, Which, like some old bell in tolling, through the vaulted building rung:-- Cold and stern the prisoner answered--cold and stern--devoid of fear-- Looking haughtily around him:--"Roland, Baron Grey, is here!"