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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 3. The Landlord's Tale; The Rhyme of Sir Christopher</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It was Sir Christopher Gardiner,<br>Knight of the Holy Sepulchre,<br>From Merry England over the sea,<br>Who stepped upon this continent<br>As if his august presence lent<br>A glory to the colony.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">You should have seen him in the street<br>Of the little Boston of Winthrop's time,<br>His rapier dangling at his feet<br>Doublet and hose and boots complete,<br>Prince Rupert hat with ostrich plume,<br>Gloves that exhaled a faint perfume,<br>Luxuriant curls and air sublime,<br>And superior manners now obsolete!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He had a way of saying things<br>That made one think of courts and kings,<br>And lords and ladies of high degree;<br>So that not having been at court<br>Seemed something very little short<br>Of treason or lese-majesty,<br>Such an accomplished knight was he.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">His dwelling was just beyond the town,<br>At what he called his country-seat;<br>For, careless of Fortune's smile or frown,<br>And weary grown of the world and its ways,<br>He wished to pass the rest of his days<br>In a private life and a calm retreat.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But a double life was the life he led,<br>And, while professing to be in search<br>Of a godly course, and willing, he said,<br>Nay, anxious to join the Puritan church,<br>He made of all this but small account,<br>And passed his idle hours instead<br>With roystering Morton of Merry Mount,<br>That pettifogger from Furnival's Inn,<br>Lord of misrule and riot and sin,<br>Who looked on the wine when it was red.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This country-seat was little more<br>Than a cabin of log's; but in front of the door<br>A modest flower-bed thickly sown<br>With sweet alyssum and columbine<br>Made those who saw it at once divine<br>The touch of some other hand than his own.<br>And first it was whispered, and then it was known,<br>That he in secret was harboring there<br>A little lady with golden hair,<br>Whom he called his cousin, but whom he had wed<br>In the Italian manner, as men said,<br>And great was the scandal everywhere.<br>But worse than this was the vague surmise,<br>Though none could vouch for it or aver,<br>That the Knight of the Holy Sepulchre<br>Was only a Papist in disguise;<br>And the more to imbitter their bitter lives,<br>And the more to trouble the public mind,<br>Came letters from England, from two other wives,<br>Whom he had carelessly left behind;<br>Both of them letters of such a kind<br>As made the governor hold his breath;<br>The one imploring him straight to send<br>The husband home, that he might amend;<br>The other asking his instant death,<br>As the only way to make an end.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The wary governor deemed it right,<br>When all this wickedness was revealed,<br>To send his warrant signed and sealed,<br>And take the body of the knight.<br>Armed with this mighty instrument,<br>The marshal, mounting his gallant steed,<br>Rode forth from town at the top of his speed,<br>And followed by all his bailiffs bold,<br>As if on high achievement bent,<br>To storm some castle or stronghold,<br>Challenge the warders on the wall,<br>And seize in his ancestral hall<br>A robber-baron grim and old.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But when though all the dust and heat<br>He came to Sir Christopher's country-seat,<br>No knight he found, nor warder there,<br>But the little lady with golden hair,<br>Who was gathering in the bright sunshine<br>The sweet alyssum and columbine;<br>While gallant Sir Christopher, all so gay,<br>Being forewarned, through the postern gate<br>Of his castle wall had tripped away,<br>And was keeping a little holiday<br>In the forests, that bounded his estate.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then as a trusty squire and true<br>The marshal searched the castle through,<br>Not crediting what the lady said;<br>Searched from cellar to garret in vain,<br>And, finding no knight, came out again<br>And arrested the golden damsel instead,<br>And bore her in triumph into the town,<br>While from her eyes the tears rolled down<br>On the sweet alyssum and columbine,<br>That she held in her fingers white and fine.<br>The governor's heart was moved to see<br>So fair a creature caught within<br>The snares of Satan and of sin,<br>And he read her a little homily<br>On the folly and wickedness of the lives<br>Of women half cousins and half wives;<br>But, seeing that naught his words availed,<br>He sent her away in a ship that sailed<br>For Merry England over the sea,<br>To the other two wives in the old countree,<br>To search her further, since he had failed<br>To come at the heart of the mystery.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Meanwhile Sir Christopher wandered away<br>Through pathless woods for a month and a day,<br>Shooting pigeons, and sleeping at night<br>With the noble savage, who took delight<br>In his feathered hat and his velvet vest,<br>His gun and his rapier and the rest.<br>But as soon as the noble savage heard<br>That a bounty was offered for this gay bird,<br>He wanted to slay him out of hand,<br>And bring in his beautiful scalp for a show,<br>Like the glossy head of a kite or crow,<br>Until he was made to understand<br>They wanted the bird alive, not dead;<br>Then he followed him whithersoever he fled,<br>Through forest and field, and hunted him down,<br>And brought him prisoner into the town.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Alas! it was a rueful sight,<br>To see this melancholy knight<br>In such a dismal and hapless case;<br>His hat deformed by stain and dent,<br>His plumage broken, his doublet rent,<br>His beard and flowing locks forlorn,<br>Matted, dishevelled, and unshorn,<br>His boots with dust and mire besprent;<br>But dignified in his disgrace,<br>And wearing an unblushing face.<br>And thus before the magistrate<br>He stood to hear the doom of fate.<br>In vain he strove with wonted ease<br>To modify and extenuate<br>His evil deeds in church and state,<br>For gone was now his power to please;<br>And his pompous words had no more weight<br>Than feathers flying in the breeze.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">With suavity equal to his own<br>The governor lent a patient ear<br>To the speech evasive and highflown,<br>In which he endeavored to make clear<br>That colonial laws were too severe<br>When applied to a gallant cavalier,<br>A gentleman born, and so well known,<br>And accustomed to move in a higher sphere.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">All this the Puritan governor heard,<br>And deigned in answer never a word;<br>But in summary manner shipped away,<br>In a vessel that sailed from Salem Bay,<br>This splendid and famous cavalier,<br>With his Rupert hat and his popery,<br>To Merry England over the sea,<br>As being unmeet to inhabit here.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409654" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Thus endeth the Rhyme of Sir Christopher,<br>Knight of the Holy Sepulchre,<br>The first who furnished this barren land<br>With apples of Sodom and ropes of sand.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Henry+Wadsworth+Longfellow">Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</a></strong></div>