When true knighthood’s shield, neglected, Moulder’d in the empty hall; When the charms that shield protected Slept in death’s eternal thrall; When chivalric glory perish’d Like the pageant of a dream, Love in vain its memory cherish’d, Fired in vain the minstrel’s theme. Falsehood to an elfish minion Did the form of Love impart; Cunning plumed its vampire pinion; Avarice tipp’d its golden dart. Love, the hideous phantom flying, Hither came, no more to rove: There his broken bow is lying On that stone—the tomb of Love! CHAPTER X THE TORRENT Anthelia did not wish to condemn herself to celibacy, but in none of her present suitors could she discover any trace of the character she had drawn in her mind for the companion of her life: yet she was aware of the rashness of precipitate judgments, and willing to avail herself of this opportunity of studying the kind of beings that constitute modern society. She was happy in the long interval between breakfast and dinner, to retire to the seclusion of her favourite apartment; whence she sometimes wandered into the shades of her shrubbery: sometimes passing onward through a little postern door, she descended a flight of rugged steps, which had been cut in the solid stone, into the gloomy glen of the torrent that dashed round the base of the castle-rock; and following a lonely path through the woods that fringed its sides, wandered into the deepest recesses of mountain solitude. The sunshine of a fine autumnal day, the solemn beauty of the fading woods, the thin gray mist, that spread waveless over the mountains, the silence of the air, the deep stillness of nature, broken only by the sound of the eternal streams, tempted her on one occasion beyond her usual limits.