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Hither did Richard bear his brother’s corse
And fling it down. Upon the stone-paved floor
In a thin strip of moonlight flung it down,
And then drew breath. Perhaps he paused to glance
At the white face there, with the strange half-smile
Out-living death, the brightness of the hair
Lying in loops and tangles round the brow–
A seraph’s face of silver set in gold,
Such as the deft Italians know to carve;
Perhaps his tiger’s blood cooled then, perhaps
Swift pity at his very heart-strings tugged,
And he in that black moment of remorse,
Seeing how there his nobler self lay slain,
Had bartered all this jewel-studded earth
To win life’s color back to that wan cheek.
Ah, let us hope it, and some mercy feel,
Since each at compt shall need of mercy have.
Now how it happened, whether ‘t was the wind,
Or whether ‘t was some incorporeal hand
That reached down through the dark and did the thing,
Man knoweth not, but suddenly both doors,
Ere one could utter cry or put forth arm,
Closed with dull clang, and there in his own trap
Incontinent was red-stained Richard caught,
And as by flash of lightning saw his doom.
Call, an thou wilt, but every ear is stuffed
With slumber! Shriek, and run quick frenzied hands
Along the iron sheathing of thy grave–
For ‘t is thy grave–no egress shalt thou find,
No lock to break, no subtile-sliding bolt,
No careless rivet, no half loosened plate
For dagger’s point to fret at and pry off
And let a stifling mortal get to air!

Angels of Light! what were a thousand years
Of rankling envy and contemned love
And all the bitter draughts a man may drink
To that half hour of Richard’s with his Dead?

Through silence, gloom, and star-strown paths of Night
The breathless hours like phantoms stole away.
Black lay the earth, in primal blackness wrapt
Ere the great miracle once more was wrought.
A chill wind freshened in the pallid East
And brought sea-smell of newly blossomed foam,
And stirred the leaves and branch-hung nests of birds.
Fainter the glow-worm’s lantern glimmered now
In the marsh land and on the forest’s hem,
And the slow dawn with purple laced the sky
Where sky and sea lay sharply edge to edge.
The purple melted, changed to violet,
And that to every delicate sea-shell tinge,
Blush-pink, deep cinnabar; then no change was,
Save that the air had in it sense of wings,
Till suddenly the heavens were all aflame,
And it was morning. O great miracle!
O radiance and splendor of the Throne,
Daily vouchsafed to us! Yet saith the fool,
“There is no God!” And now a level gleam,
Thrust like a spear-head through the tangled boughs,
Smote Wyndham’s turrets, and the spell was broke.

And one by one, on pallet stretched or floor,
The sleepers wakened; each took up afresh
His load of life; but two there were woke not,
Nor knew ‘t was daybreak. From the rusty nail
The gateman snatched his bunch of ancient keys,
And, yawning, vowed the sun an hour too soon;
The scullion, with face shining like his pans,
Hose down at heel and jerkin half unlaced,
On hearthstone knelt to coax the smouldering log;
The keeper fetched the yelping hounds their meat;
The hostler whistled in the stalls; anon,
With rustling skirt and slumber-freshened cheek,
The kerchief’d housemaid tripped from room to room
(Sweet Gillian, she that broke the groom his heart),
While, wroth within, behind a high-backed chair
The withered butler for his master waited,
Cursing the cook. That day the brewis spoiled.