--The joyous sun rose over the white cliffs Of Devon, sparkled through the poplar-tops, And broke the death-like slumber of the Hall. The keeper fetched their breakfast to the hounds; The smart, young ostler whistled in the stalls; The pretty housemaid tripped from room to room; And grave and grand behind his master's chair, But wroth within to have the partridge spoil, The senile butler waited for his lord. But neither Regnald nor young Eustace came. And when 't was found that neither slept at Hall That night, their couches being still unpressed, The servants stared. And as the day wore on, And evening came, and then another day, And yet another, till a week had gone, The wonder spread, and riders sent in haste Scoured the country, dragged the neighboring streams, Tracked wayward footprints to the great chalk bluffs, But found not Regnald, lord of Garnaut Hall. The place that knew him knew him never more. The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew. And Agnes Vail, the little Saxon rose, Waxed pale and paler, till the country-folk Half guessed her fate was somehow intertwined With that dark house. When her pure soul had passed,-- Just as a perfume floats from out the world,-- Wild tales were told of how the brothers loved The self-same maid, whom neither one would wed Because the other loved her as his life; And that the two, at midnight, in despair, From one sheer cliff plunged headlong in the sea. And when, at night, the hoarse east-wind rose high, Rattled the lintels, clamoring at the door, The children huddled closer round the hearth And whispered very softly with themselves, "That's Master Regnald looking for his Bride!" The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew. Decay and dolor settled on the Hall. The wind went howling in the dismal rooms, Rustling the arras; and the wainscot-mouse Gnawed through the mighty Garnauts on the wall, And made a lodging for her glossy young In dead Sir Egbert's empty coat-of-mail; The griffon dropped from off the blazoned shield; The stables rotted; and a poisonous vine Stretched its rank nets across the lonely lawn. For no one went there,--'t was a haunted spot. A legend killed it for a kindly home,-- A grim estate, which every heir in turn Left to the orgies of the wind and rain, The newt, the toad, the spider, and the mouse. The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew. And once, 't is said, the Queen reached out her hand And let it rest on Cecil's velvet sleeve, And said, "I prithee, Cecil, tell us now, Was 't ever known what happened to those men,-- Those Garnauts?--were they never, never found?" The weasel face had fain looked wise for her, But no one of that century ever knew.