| |
| I waited for the train at Coventry; | |
| I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, | |
| To watch the three tall spires: and there I shaped | |
| The city’s ancient legend into this: | |
| |
| Not only we, the latest seed of Time, | 5 |
| New men, that in the flying of a wheel | |
| Cry down the past; not only we, that prate | |
| Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well, | |
| And loathed to see them overtaxed; but she | |
| Did more, and underwent, and overcame, | 10 |
| The woman of a thousand summers back, | |
| Godiva, wife to that grim Earl who ruled | |
| In Coventry: for when he laid a tax | |
| Upon his town, and all the mothers brought | |
| Their children, clamoring, “If we pay, we starve!” | 15 |
| She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode | |
| About the hall, among his dogs, alone, | |
| His beard a foot before him, and his hair | |
| A yard behind. She told him of their tears, | |
| And prayed him, “If they pay this tax they starve.” | 20 |
| Whereat he stared, replying, half amazed, | |
| “You would not let your little finger ache | |
| For such as these?” “But I would die,” said she. | |
| He laughed, and swore by Peter and by Paul: | |
| Then filliped at the diamond in her ear; | 25 |
| “O, ay, ay, ay, you talk!” “Alas!” she said, | |
| “But prove me what it is I would not do.” | |
| And from a heart as rough as Esau’s hand, | |
| He answered, “Ride you naked through the town, | |
| And I repeal it;” and nodding, as in scorn, | 30 |
| He parted, with great strides among his dogs. | |
| So left alone, the passions of her mind, | |
| As winds from all the compass shift and blow, | |
| Made war upon each other for an hour, | |
| Till pity won. She sent a herald forth, | 35 |
| And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all | |
| The hard condition; but that she would loose | |
| The people: therefore, as they loved her well, | |
| From then till noon no foot should pace the street, | |
| No eye look down, she passing; but that all | 40 |
| Should keep within, door shut and window barred. | |
| Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there | |
| Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt, | |
| The grim Earl’s gift; but ever at a breath | |
| She lingered, looking like a summer moon | 45 |
| Half dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head, | |
| And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee; | |
| Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair | |
| Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid | |
| From pillar unto pillar, until she reached | 50 |
| The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt | |
| In purple blazoned with armorial gold. | |
| Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity: | |
| The deep air listened round her as she rode, | |
| And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. | 55 |
| The little wide-mouthed heads upon the spout | |
| Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur | |
| Made her cheek flame: her palfrey’s footfall shot | |
| Light horrors through her pulses: the blind walls | |
| Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead | 60 |
| Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she | |
| Not less through all bore up, till, last, she saw | |
| The white-flowered elder-thicket from the field | |
| Gleam through the Gothic archways in the wall. | |
| Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity: | 65 |
| And one low churl, compact of thankless earth, | |
| The fatal byword of all years to come, | |
| Boring a little auger hole in fear, | |
| Peeped—but his eyes, before they had their will, | |
| Were shrivelled into darkness in his head, | 70 |
| And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait | |
| On noble deeds, cancelled a sense misused; | |
| And she, that knew not, passed: and all at once, | |
| With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon | |
| Was clashed and hammered from a hundred towers, | 75 |
| One after one: but even then she gained | |
| Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crowned, | |
| To meet her lord, she took the tax away, | |
| And built herself an everlasting name. | |
| |
