id="pgepubid00039"/>—Now with worms for his courtiers
He lies in the narrow
Cold couch of the chancel:
—But whence was the arrow?

Then a shudder of death
Flicker’d fast through the wood:—
And they found the Red King
Red-gilt in his blood.
What wells up in his throat?
Is it cursing, or prayer?
Was it Henry, or Tyrrell,
Or demon, who there
Has dyed the fell tyrant
Twice crimson in gore,
While the soul disincarnate
Hunts on to hell-door?

   —Ah! friendless in death!
Rude forest-hands fling
On the charcoaler’s wain
What but now was the king!
And through the long Minster
The carcass they bear,
And huddle it down
Without priest, without prayer:—

Now with worms for his courtiers
He lies in the narrow
Cold couch of the chancel:
—But whence was the arrow?

In his cups; Rufus, it is said, was ‘fey,’ as the old phrase has it, on the day of his death.  He feasted long and high, and then chose out two cross-bow shafts, presenting them to Tyrrell with the exclamation given above.

Serlo; He was Abbot of Gloucester, and had sent to Rufus the narrative of an ominous dream, reported in the Monastery.

The true dreams; On his last night Rufus ‘laid himself down to sleep, but not in peace; the attendants were startled by the King’s voice—a bitter cry—a cry for help—a cry for deliverance—he had been suddenly awakened by a dreadful dream, as of exquisite anguish befalling him in that ruined church, at the foot of the Malwood rampart.’  Palgrave: Hist. of Normandy and of England, B. IV: ch. xii.

Young Richard; Son to Robert Courthose, and hunting, as his uncle’s guest, in the New Forest in May 1100, was mysteriously slain by a heavy bolt from a Norman Arbalest.

The Evil-wood walls; ‘Amongst the sixty churches which had been ‘ruined,’ my Father remarks, in his notice of the New Forest, ‘the sanctuary below the mystic Malwood was peculiarly remarkable. . . . You reach the Malwood easily from the Leafy Lodge in the favourite deer-walk, the Lind-hurst, the Dragon’s wood.’

Through the long Minster; Winchester.  Rufus, with much hesitation, was buried in the chancel as a king; but no religious service or ceremonial was celebrated:—‘All men thought that prayers were hopeless.’

EDITH OF ENGLAND

1100

Through sapling shades of summer green,
   By glade and height and hollow,
Where Rufus rode the stag to bay,
King Henry spurs a jocund way,
   Another chase to follow.
But when he came to Romsey gate
   The doors are open’d free,
And through the gate like sunshine streams
   A maiden company:—
One girdled with the vervain-red,
   And three in sendal gray,
And touch the trembling rebeck-strings
   To their soft roundelay;—

—The bravest knight may fail in fight;
   The red rust edge the sword;

The king his crown in dust lay down;
   But Love is always Lord!

King Henry at her feet flings down,
   His helmet ringing loudly:—
His kisses worship Edith’s hand;
‘Wilt thou be Queen of all the land?’
   —O red she blush’d and proudly!
Red as the crimson girdle bound
   Beneath her gracious breast;
Red as the silken scarf that flames
   Above his lion-crest.
She lifts and casts the cloister-veil
   All on the cloister-floor:—
The novice maids of Romsey smile,
   And think of love once more.

‘Well, well, to blush!’ the Abbess cried,
   ‘The veil and vow deriding
That rescued thee, in baby days,
From insolence of Norman gaze,
   In pure and holy hiding.
—O royal child of South and North,
   Malcolm and Margaret,
The promised bride of Heaven art thou,
   And Heaven will not forget!
What recks it, if an alien King
   Encoronet thy brow,
Or if the false Italian priest
   Pretend to loose the vow?’

O then to white the red rose went
   On Edith’s cheek abiding!
With even glance she answer’d meek
‘I leave the life I did not seek,
   In holy Church confiding’:—
Then Love smiled true on Henry’s face,
  

And Anselm join’d the hands
That in one race two races bound
   By everlasting bands.
So Love is Lord, and Alfred’s blood
   Returns the land to sway;
And all her joyous maidens join
   In their soft roundelay:

—For though the knight may fail in fight,
   The red rust edge the sword,
The king his crown in dust lay down,
   Yet Love is always Lord!

Edith, (who, after marriage, took the name Matilda in compliment to Henry’s mother), daughter to Malcolm King of Scotland by Margaret, granddaughter of Edmund Ironside, had been brought up by her aunt Christina, and placed in Romsey Abbey for security against Norman violence.  But she had always refused to take the vows, and was hence, in opposition to her aunt’s wish, declared canonically free to marry by Anselm; called here an Italian priest, as born at Aosta.  Henry had been long attached to the Princess, and married her shortly after his accession.

A CRUSADER’S TOMB

1230

Unnamed, unknown:—his hands across his breast
   Set in sepulchral rest,
In yon low cave-like niche the warrior lies,
   —A shrine within a shrine,—
Full of gray peace, while day to darkness dies.

Then the forgotten dead at midnight come
   And throng their chieftain’s tomb,
Murmuring the toils o’er which they toil’d, alive,
  

The feats of sword and love;
And all the air thrills like a summer hive.

—How so, thou say’st!—This is the poet’s right!
   He looks with larger sight
Than they who hedge their view by present things,
   The small, parochial world
Of sight and touch: and what he sees, he sings.

The steel-shell’d host, that, gleaming as it turns,
   Like autumn lightning burns,
A moment’s azure, the fresh flags that glance
   As cornflowers o’er the corn,
Till war’s stern step show like a gala dance,

He also sees; and pierces to the heart,
   Scanning the genuine part
Each Red-Cross pilgrim plays: Some, gold-enticed;
   By love or lust or fame
Urged; or who yearn to kiss the grave of Christ

And find their own, life-wearied:—Motley band!
   O! ere they quit the Land
How maim’d, how marr’d, how changed from all that pride
   In which so late they left
Orwell or Thames, with sails out-swelling wide

And music tuneable with the timing oar
   Clear heard from shore to shore;
All Europe streaming to the mystic East!
   —Now on their sun-smit ranks
The dusky squadrons close in vulture-feast,

And that fierce Day-star’s blazing ball their sight
   Sears with excess of light;
Or through dun sand-clouds the blue scimitar’s edge
   Slopes down like fire from heaven,
Mowing them as the thatcher mows the sedge.

Then many a heart remember’d, as the skies
   Grew dark on dying eyes,
Sweet England; her fresh fields and gardens trim;
   Her tree-embower’d halls;
And the one face that was the