FullReads

The brown thrush sang through the briar and bower,
All flush’d or frosted with forest flower
In the warm sun’s wanton glances;
And I grew deaf to the song bird–blind
To blossom that sweeten’d the sweet spring wind–
I saw her only–a girl reclined
In her girlhood’s indolent trances.

And the song and the scent and sense wax’d weak,
The wild rose withered beside the cheek
She poised on her fingers slender;
The soft spun gold of her glittering hair
Ran rippling into a wondrous snare,
That flooded the round arm bright and bare,
And the shoulder’s silvery splendour.

The deep dusk fires in those dreamy eyes,
Like seas clear-coloured in summer skies,
Were guiltless of future treason;
And I stood watching her, still and mute,
Yet the evil seed in my soul found root,
And the sad plant throve, and the sinful fruit
Grew ripe in the shameful season.

Let the sin be mine as the shame was hers,
In desolate days of departed years
She had leisure for shame and sorrow–
There was light repentance and brief remorse,
When I rode against Saxon foes or Norse,
With clang of harness and clatter of horse,
And little heed for the morrow.

And now she is dead, men tell me, and I,
In this living death must I linger and lie
Till my cup to the dregs is drunken?
I looked through the lattice worn and grim,
With eyelids darken’d and eyesight dim,
And weary body and wasted limb,
And sinew slacken’d and shrunken.

She is dead! Gone down to the burial-place,
Where the grave-dews cleave to her faultless face;
Where the grave-sods crumble around her;
And that bright burden of burnish’d gold,
That once on those waxen shoulders roll’d,
Will it spoil with the damps of the deadly mould?
Was it shorn when the church vows bound her?

Now I know full well that the fair spear shaft
Shall never gladden my hand, nor the haft
Of the good sword grow to my fingers;
Now the maddest fray, the merriest din,
Would fail to quicken this life-stream thin,
Yet the sleepy poison of that sweet sin
In the sluggish current still lingers.

Would God I had slept with the slain men, long
Or ever the heart conceived a wrong
That the innermost soul abhorred–
Or ever these lying lips were strained
To her lids, pearl-tinted and purple-vein’d,
Or ever those traitorous kisses stained
The snows of her spotless forehead.

Let me gather a little strength to think,
As one who reels on the outermost brink,
To the innermost gulf descending.
In that truce the longest and last of all,
In the summer nights of that festival–
Soft vesture of samite and silken pall–
The beginning came of the ending.

And one trod softly with sandal’d feet–
Ah! why are the stolen waters sweet?–
And one crept stealthily after;
I would I had taken him there and wrung
His knavish neck when the dark door swung,
Or torn by the roots his treacherous tongue,
And stifled his hateful laughter.

So the smouldering scandal blazed–but he,
My king, to the last put trust in me–
Aye, well was his trust requited!
Now priests may patter, and bells may toll,
He will need no masses to aid his soul;
When the angels open the judgment scroll,
His wrong will be tenfold righted.

Then dawn’d the day when the mail was donn’d,
And the steed for the strife caparison’d,
But not ‘gainst the Norse invader.
Then was bloodshed–not by untoward chance,
As the blood that is drawn by the jouster’s lance,
The fray in the castle of Melegrance,
The fight in the lists with Mador.