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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WHITE LADY by JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN

First Line: ONCE MORE THE PHANTOM COUNTESS, ATTIRED IN WHITE, APPEARS
Last Line: AND MYRIADS MORE WITH LADY AGNES!
Once more the phantom Countess, attired in white appears,
With weeping and with wailing, with tremors and with tears;
Once more appears a gliding forth from pictures and from walls,
In Prussia's gorgeous palaces and old baronial halls-
And the guards who pace the battlements and terraces by night,
Are smitten with a speechlessness and swooning at the sight.
O pray for Lady Agnes, For the soul of Lady Agnes.


Comes she to announce the death of Kings and Kaisars as of yore,
A funeral and a crowning, a pageant and no more?
I know not, but ' tis whispered through the land from south to north-
That a deeper grief, a wider woe, to-night has called her forth.
O pray for Lady Agnes.


'I sinful one in Ornamund, I slew my children fair,
Thence evermore, till time be o'er, my doom and my despair.
Then think of me, and what I see-you whom no law controls,
Who slay your people; holiest hopes- their liber- ties their souls-
The dry bones rattle in their shrouds, but you, you make no sign,
How dare I hope to move your hearts with these weak words of mine.
O pray for Lady Agnes,
For the sinful Lady Agnes.


Through the hundred-vaulted cavern crypt where I and mine abide,
Boom the thunders of the rising storm, the surging of the tide;
Ye notethem not -you will not heed the hosts of hate and fate,
Alas! ye soon will know them well-too soon, yet all too late.


About my head lie brightly spread, the flowers that summer gives,
Fresh breezes blow, free waters flow, all nature laughs and lives;
But where you tread, the flowers drop dead, the grass grows rank and sere,
And round you floats in clotted waves,
Hell's lurid atmosphere.
O pray for Lady Agnes.'




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