The supper of armor

Bjorn, a strange cœnobite,

On the plateau of a bare rock,

Inhabits, out of the world and time,

The tower of a fortress demolished.

At his door the modern spirit

In vain lifts up the weighty knocker.

Bjorn bolts his postern shut

And his castle keeps tight-locked.

When every eye is toward the dawn

Bjorn, perched upon his dungeon,

Gazes still the horizon upon

At the place of the setting sun.

Retrospective soul, he lodges

In his fortress in the past,

The pendulum of his grandfather clock

Some centuries ago worked last.

Underneath his ogives feudal

He wanders, waking up the echoes,

And his steps, the flagstones moot all,

Seem to be followed by even steps.

He sees no laymen nor any presters,

Nor gentlemen, nor men of town,

But the portraits of his ancestors

Talk with him again and now.

And certain nights, to lend him spice,

Finding dinner alone a bore there,

Bjorn, a funerary caprice,

Asks to supper all his forebears.

The phantoms, when tolls the midnight bell,

Arrive in armor pie-a-cap,

Bjorn, who shivers in spite of himself,

Salutes by lifting high his hanap.

To seat itself, each panoply

With its kneejoint makes an angle,

Whose articulation yields

Grating like an old doorbolt.

And all of a piece, the suit of armor,

Gauche casket of a body not there,

Making a dull and hollow murmur,

Falls twixt the arms of an easy chair.

Landgraves, rhinegraves, also burgraves,

Come from heaven or from hell,

They are all there, silent and grave,

Stiff convives of hardened steel!

In the dark, a wild beam plays

On a monster, wyvern, two-necked eagle,

From the heraldic bestiary

Upon their crests by many blows mangled.

From the snout of beats deformed

Raising up their nails arrogant,

Spring forth varied plumes enormous,

Lambrequins extravagant,

But the open helmets are void

As the timbre on coats of arms;

Only two flames that are livid

Gleam within like strange alarms.

Every bit of scrap iron sits

In the hall of the old manor,

And, on the wall, a shadow flits

Giving each guest a page of honor.

The liquors in the fire of candles

Are purplish with a tint that’s suspect,

Each course within its red sauce spangled

Takes on a singularmost aspect.

Now and again a corslet sparkles,

A morion shines for just a moment,

A piece that’s come unhinged quite tumbles

Down upon the tablecloth groaning.

One listens to the beating wings

Of bats that are invisible,

And along the wainscoting

Flags of infidel nations tremble.

With the most fantastical movements

Curling their phalanges of bronze

Gauntlets pour into the helmets

Glassfuls of the Rhineland’s wines,

Or with a dagger’s edge, they cut

On golden plates a wild boar...

While vague noises pass from out

The organs of the corridor.

With a voice that still is hoarse

From the dampness of the tomb,

Max hums, playful drunkenness,

A lied, in thirteen hundred, new.

Albrecht, having wine that’s fierce,

Quarrels with his quondam cousins,

Whom he pounds on, humped and beastly,

As he did the Saracens.

Overheated, Fritz unhelms,

Where no skull was ever sunk,

Never thinking his unmasked self

Looks just like a headless trunk.

Quickly now they roll pell-mell

Beneath the table, among the crocks,

Head below, showing the sole

Of their shoes curvate with hooks.

It’s a hideous battlefield

Where an armet hits a pot,

Where the dead by each cut yield

No blood but each course in a vomit.

And Bjorn, his fist upon his thigh,

Contemplates them, drawn and haggard,

Whileas, through the Swiss stained glass,

Sunup casts its blue regard.

The troupe, whom a sunbeam crosses,

Grows pale like a torch at noon,

And the drunkenmost back tosses

The stirrup cup before the tomb.

The cock crows, the specters fly

And with a lofty air replete,

On the marble pillow lay

Their heads still aching from the feast!

Théophile Gautier