“A year again, and on Inchkeith Isle I saw thee pass in the breeze, With the cerecloth risen above thy feet And wound about thy knees. “And yet a year, in the Links of Forth, As a wanderer without rest, Thou cam’st with both thine arms i’ the shroud That clung high up thy breast. * * * * * * “And when I met thee again, O King, That of death hast such sore drouth,— Except thou turn again on this shore,— The winding-sheet shall have moved once more, And covered thine eyes and mouth. “For every man on God’s ground, O King, His death grows up from his birth In a shadow-plant perpetually; And thine towers high, a black yew-tree, O’er the Charterhouse of Perth!” Then, in strange contrast to the wild scenery of the “black beach-side” in winter, we are shown the king and queen at home and keeping festival in the ill-fated house. The revelry of the halls, and the quiet joy of the hearthside, seem to avert for a time the coming woe. The king takes his harp, and sings to the queen an old love-song which he had written to her from prison long ago. But soon the boded fate falls on them unaware: “’Twas a wind-wild eve in February, And against the casement pane The branches smote like summoning hands, And muttered the driving rain.” The entrance of the traitors, with “three hundred armèd men,” urges on the climax of the tragedy, until at last the king, discovered in the vault where he had hastily hidden: “Half-naked stood, but stood as one Who yet could do and dare. With the crown, the King was stript away,— The Knight was ’reft of his battle array,— But still the man was there!” The poem ends on a stern note of revenge and retribution, for, when the shameful deed is done, the queen keeps watch for a whole month beside the royal body; refusing to permit the burial till every one of the “murderous league” is put to a more terrible death than his lord. “And then she said,—‘My King, they are dead!’ And she knelt on the chapel floor, And whispered low with a strange proud smile,— ‘James, James, they suffered more!’”