Tales of a Wayside Inn

The Landlord ended thus his tale, / Then rising took down from its nail / The sword that hung there, dim with dust / And cleaving to its sheath with rust, / And said, "This sword was in the fight. " / The Poet seized it, and exclaimed, / "It is the sword of a good knight, / Though homespun was his coat-of-mail; / What matter if it be not named / Joyeuse, Colada, Durindale, / Excalibar, or Aroundight, / Or other name the books record? / Your ancestor, who bore this sword / As Colonel of the Volunteers, / Mounted upon his old gray mare, / Seen here and there and everywhere, / To me a grander shape appears / Than old Sir William, or what not, / Clinking about in foreign lands / With iron gauntlets on his hands, / And on his head an iron pot!"

All laughed; the Landlord's face grew red / As his escutcheon on the wall; / He could not comprehend at all / The drift of what the Poet said; / For those who had been longest dead / Were always greatest in his eyes; / And he was speechless with surprise / To see Sir William's plumed head / Brought to a level with the rest, / And made the subject of a jest. / And this perceiving, to appease / The Landlord's wrath, the others' fears, / The Student said, with careless ease, / "The ladies and the cavaliers, / The arms, the loves, the courtesies, / The deeds of high emprise, I sing! / Thus Ariosto says, in words / That have the stately stride and ring / Of armed knights and clashing swords. / Now listen to the tale I bring / Listen! though not to me belong / The flowing draperies of his song, / The words that rouse, the voice that charms. / The Landlord's tale was one of arms, / Only a tale of love is mine, / Blending the human and divine, / A tale of the Decameron, told / In Palmieri's garden old, / By Fiametta, laurel-crowned, / While her companions lay around, / And heard the intermingled sound / Of airs that on their errands sped, / And wild birds gossiping overhead, / And lisp of leaves, and fountain's fall, / And her own voice more sweet than all, / Telling the tale, which, wanting these, / Perchance may lose its power to please."