It touched with more than wonted grace
Fair Princess Mary's pictured face;
It bronzed the rafters overhead,

On the old spinet's ivory keys

It played inaudible melodies,

It crowned the sombre clock with flame,
The hands, the hours, the maker's name,
And painted with a livelier red
The Landlord's coat-of-arms again;
And, flashing on the window-pane,
Emblazoned with its light and shade
The jovial rhymes, that still remain,
Writ near a century ago,

By the great Major Molineaux,

Whom Hawthorne has immortal made.

Before the blazing fire of wood
Erect the rapt musician stood;
And ever and anon he bent
His head upon his instrument,
And seemed to listen, till he caught
Confessions of its secret thought,
The joy, the triumph, the lament,
The exultation and the pain;
Then, by the magic of his art,

He soothed the throbbings of its heart, And lulled it into peace again.

Around the fireside at their ease

There sat a group of friends, entranced

With the delicious melodies;

Who from the far-off noisy town.

Had to the wayside inn come down,

To rest beneath its old oak trees.
The fire-light on their faces glanced,
Their shadows on the wainscot danced,
And, though of different lands and speech,
Each had his tale to tell, and each
Was anxious to be pleased and please.
And while the sweet musician plays,
Let me in outline sketch them all,
Perchance uncouthly as the blaze
With its uncertain touch portrays
Their shadowy semblance on the wall.

But first the Landlord will I trace;
Grave in his aspect and attire ;
A man of ancient pedigree,
A Justice of the Peace was he,
Known in all Sudbury as "The Squire."
Proud was he of his name and race,
Of old Sir William and Sir Hugh,
And in the parlor, full in view,

His coat-of-arms, well framed and glazed,
Upon the wall in colors blazed;

He beareth gules upon his shield,

A chevron argent in the field,

With three wolf's heads, and for the crest A Wyvern part-per-pale addressed

Upon a helmet barred; below

The scroll reads, "By the name of Howe."
And over this, no longer bright,
Though glimmering with a latent light,
Was hung the sword his grandsire bore
In the rebellious days of yore,
Down there at Concord in the fight.

A youth was there, of quiet ways,

A Student of old books and days,

To whom all tongues and lands were known,
And yet a lover of his own;

With many a social virtue graced,
And yet a friend of solitude;
A man of such a genial mood
The heart of all things he embraced,
And yet of such fastidious taste,
He never found the best too good.
Books were his passion and delight,
And in his upper room at home
Stood many a rare and sumptuous tome,
In vellum bound, with gold bedight,
Great volumes garmented in white,
Recalling Florence, Pisa, Rome.
He loved the twilight that surrounds
The border-land of old romance;
Where glitter hauberk, helm, and lance,
And banner waves, and trumpet sounds,
And ladies ride with hawk on wrist,
And mighty warriors sweep along,
Magnified by the purple mist,

The dusk of centuries and of song.
The chronicles of Charlemagne,
Of Merlin and the Mort d'Arthure,
Mingled together in his brain

With tales of Flores and Blanchefleur,
Sir Ferumbras, Sir Eglamour,

Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour,
Sir Guy, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain.

A young Sicilian, too, was there;
In sight of Etna born and bred,

Some breath of its volcanic air

Was glowing in his heart and brain,
And, being rebellious to his liege,
After Palermo's fatal siege,
Across the western seas he fled,
In good King Bomba's happy reign.
His face was like a summer night,
All flooded with a dusky light;

His hands were small; his teeth shone white
As sea-shells, when he smiled or spoke ;

His sinews supple and strong as oak;
Clean shaven was he as a priest,
Who at the mass on Sunday sings,
Save that upon his upper lip

His beard, a good palm's length at least,
Level and pointed at the tip,

Shot sideways, like a swallow's wings.

The poets read he o'er and o'er,

And most of all the Immortal Four

Of Italy; and next to those,
The story-telling bard of prose,
Who wrote the joyous Tuscan tales
Of the Decameron, that make
Fiesole's green hills and vales
Remembered for Boccaccio's sake.
Much too of music was his thought;
The melodies and measures fraught
With sunshine and the open air,
Of vineyards and the singing sea
Of his beloved Sicily;

And much it pleased him to peruse
The songs of the Sicilian muse,
Bucolic songs by Meli sung

In the familiar peasant tongue,

That made men say, "Behold! once more The pitying gods to earth restore Theocritus of Syracuse!"

A Spanish Jew from Alicant

With aspect grand and grave was there;
Vender of silks and fabrics rare,

And attar of rose from the Levant.
Like an old Patriarch he appeared,
Abraham or Isaac, or at least

Some later Prophet or High-Priest;
With lustrous eyes, and olive skin,
And, wildly tossed from cheeks and chin,
The tumbling cataract of his beard.
His garments breathed a spicy scent
Of cinnamon and sandal blent,
Like the soft aromatic gales

That meet the mariner, who sails

Through the Moluccas, and the seas
That wash the shores of Celebes.
All stories that recorded are

By Pierre Alphonse he knew by heart,
And it was rumored he could say
The Parables of Sandabar,
And all the Fables of Pilpay,
Or if not all, the greater part!
Well versed was he in Hebrew books,
Talmud and Targum, and the lore
Of Kabala; and evermore
There was a mystery in his looks;
His eyes seemed gazing far away,
As if in vision or in trance