Perhaps, From The Casement, Standing Hand-In-Hand, They Were Watching The
Calm Moonlight On The River, While From The Distant Halls The Boisterous
Revelry Floated In Broken Bursts Of Faint-Heard Din And Tumult.
Then brutal Odo and St. Dunstan force their rude way into the quiet room,
and hurl coarse insults at the sweet-faced Queen, and drag poor Edwy back
to the loud clamour of the drunken brawl.
Years later, to the crash of battle-music, Saxon kings and Saxon revelry
were buried side by side, and Kingston's greatness passed away for a
time, to rise once more when Hampton Court became the palace of the
Tudors and the Stuarts, and the royal barges strained at their moorings
on the river's bank, and bright-cloaked gallants swaggered down the
water-steps to cry: "What Ferry, ho! Gadzooks, gramercy."
Many of the old houses, round about, speak very plainly of those days
when Kingston was a royal borough, and nobles and courtiers lived there,
near their King, and the long road to the palace gates was gay all day
with clanking steel and prancing palfreys, and rustling silks and
velvets, and fair faces. The large and spacious houses, with their
oriel, latticed windows, their huge fireplaces, and their gabled roofs,
breathe of the days of hose and doublet, of pearl-embroidered stomachers,
and complicated oaths. They were upraised in the days "when men knew how
to build." The hard red bricks have only grown more firmly set with
time, and their oak stairs do not creak and grunt when you try to go down
them quietly.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 61 of 255
Words from 16229 to 16496
of 67598
