Muttering the solemn charge, they bade him answer; but he stood Cold, and calm, and motionless, as though he were nor flesh nor blood, But, rather, all a bronzed statue of the proud, primeval time-- In his silence self-devoted--in his very guilt sublime. Thrice they prayed him: while he listened, not a quiver on his brow, Not the movement of a hair upon his head or beard of snow, Not the motion of a lip, nor even the flutter of an eye, Betokening that he even heard them--he was there alone to die. In the distant, dreary years, so run the legends even now-- Misty legends on whose summits slumber centuries of snow-- Lofty legends round whose summits clouds have lain for solemn ages-- Legends penned with iron pens in blood by Draco-minded sages-- It was written, they should bear him to a dungeon under ground, Far beneath the castle moat, where came no single human sound, And unto the earth should chain him, naked, on the icy ground-- Naked, like the sage Prometheus, on the mountain's summit bound. Water--there was none for him, save that which flowed in the castle moat, On whose green and slimy surface newts and mosses loved to float-- Bread--a crust a day--so, starving, freezing, there the Doomed was spread, Pressed with weights of stone and iron till he answered or was dead. Did he answer guiltless, lo! the trial; guilty, lo! the axe; Death before the grinning thousand! worse than were a myriad racks! While the trial were an evil quite as grievous, quite as great, For the verdict of his peers would rend from him his proud estate: But, if he died silent, then his lands would pass in quiet down To bless his boy, his innocent boy, and not escheat unto the crown: So he chose the darksome dungeon, rather there to die alone Than by cowardly fear to steal the birthright of his orphan son. But, beside this, came the thought that, by this penance he might win Forgiveness from offended Heaven for his now-repented sin. "Noble Roland," quoth his judges, "answer, ere it be too late; Heavy, else, must be our judgment--heavier thine awful fate." Then arose the ghostly knight, with his spectral eyes aflame, While a more than mortal vigor coursed and circled through his frame; And he gazed upon them smiling, and like hollow thunder broke His accents on the swarthy silence:--thus and so the chieftain spoke: "Lords! I answer not. If guilty, God will judge my sinful soul: For my body--that is yours! I yield it to your stern control. Would you have me--me, a warrior, like a coward plead for life? Death and I are old acquaintance! I have met him in the strife-- "I have met him when the air was swooning with a ghastly fear; When the Moslem swept before us, driven like a herd of deer; When our voices mocked the thunder, shouting 'England and Saint George!' And the lightning of our falchions fell like flashes from a forge!