In look and word unpaired as white and black--
Of once rich bough the last unlucky fruit.
The one, for straightness like a Norland pine
Set on some precipice's perilous edge,
Intrepid, handsome, little past blown youth,
Of all pure thought and brave deed amorous,
Moulded the court's high atmosphere to breathe,
Yet liking well the camp's more liberal air--
Poet, soldier, courtier, 't was the mode;
The other--as a glow-worm to a star--
Suspicious, morbid, passionate, self-involved,
The soul half eaten out with solitude,
Corroded, like a sword-blade left in sheath
Asleep and lost to action--in a word,
A misanthrope, a miser, a soured man,
One fortune loved not and looked at askance.
Yet he a pleasant outward semblance had.
Say what you will, and paint things as you may,
The devil is not black, with horn and hoof,
As gossips picture him: he is a person
Quite scrupulous of doublet and demeanor,
As was this Master Wyndham of The Towers,
Now latterly in most unhappy case,
Because of matters to be here set forth.

A thing of not much moment, as life goes,
A thing a man with some philosophy
Had idly brushed aside, as 't were a gnat
That winged itself between him and the light,
Had, through the crooked working of his mind,