| |
| THERE were four of us about that bed; | |
| The mass-priest knelt at the side, | |
| I and his mother stood at the head, | |
| Over his feet lay the bride; | |
| We were quite sure that he was dead, | 5 |
| Though his eyes were open wide. | |
| |
| He did not die in the night, | |
| He did not die in the day, | |
| But in the morning twilight | |
| His spirit pass’d away, | 10 |
| When neither sun nor moon was bright, | |
| And the trees were merely grey. | |
| |
| He was not slain with the sword, | |
| Knight’s axe, or the knightly spear, | |
| Yet spoke he never a word | 15 |
| After he came in here; | |
| I cut away the cord | |
| From the neck of my brother dear. | |
| |
| He did not strike one blow, | |
| For the recreants came behind, | 20 |
| In the place where the hornbeams grow, | |
| A path right hard to find, | |
| For the hornbeam boughs swing so, | |
| That the twilight makes it blind. | |
| |
| They lighted a great torch then, | 25 |
| When his arms were pinion’d fast, | |
| Sir John the Knight of the Fen, | |
| Sir Guy of the Dolorous Blast, | |
| With knights threescore and ten, | |
| Hung brave Lord Hugh at last. | 30 |
| |
| I am threescore and ten, | |
| And my hair is all turn’d grey, | |
| But I met Sir John of the Fen, | |
| Long ago on a summer day, | |
| And am glad to think of the moment when | 35 |
| I took his life away. | |
| |
| I am threescore and ten, | |
| And my strength is mostly pass’d, | |
| But long ago I and my men, | |
| When the sky was overcast, | 40 |
| And the smoke roll’d over the reeds of the fen, | |
| Slew Guy of the Dolorous Blast. | |
| |
| And now, knights all of you, | |
| I pray you pray for Sir Hugh, | |
| A good knight and a true, | 45 |
| And for Alice, his wife, pray too. | |
| |
