"_Worship, ye lovers, on this May: Of bliss your kalends are begun: Sing with us, Away, Winter, away! Come, Summer, the sweet season and sun! Awake for shame, your heaven is won, And amorously your heads lift all: Thank Love, that you to his grace doth call!_" But when he bent to the Queen, and sang The speech whose praise was hers, It seemed his voice was the voice of the Spring And the voice of the bygone years. "_The fairest and the freshest flower That ever I saw before that hour, The which o' the sudden made to start The blood of my body to my heart._ * * * * * _Ah sweet, are ye a worldly creature Or heavenly thing in form of nature?_" And the song was long, and richly stored With wonder and beauteous things; And the harp was tuned to every change Of minstrel ministerings; But when he spoke of the Queen at the last, Its strings were his own heart-strings. "_Unworthy but only of her grace, Upon Love's rock that's easy and sure, In guerdon of all my love's space She took me her humble creäture. Thus fell my blissful aventure In youth of love that from day to day Flowereth aye new, and further, I say._ "_To reck all the circumstance As it happed when lessen gan my sore, Of my rancor and woeful chance, It were too long--I have done therefor. And of this flower I say no more But unto my help her heart hath tended And even from death her man defended._" "Ay, even from death," to myself I said; For I thought of the day when she Had borne him the news, at Roxbro' siege, Of the fell confederacy. But death even then took aim as he sang With an arrow deadly bright; And the grinning skull lurked grimly aloof, And the wings were spread far over the roof More dark than the winter night. Yet truly along the amorous song Of Love's high pomp and state, There were words of Fortune's trackless doom And the dreadful face of Fate. And oft have I heard again in dreams The voice of dire appeal In which the King sang of the pit That is under Fortune's wheel. "_And under the wheel beheld I there An ugly Pit as deep as hell, That to behold I quaked for fear: And this I heard, that who therein fell Came no more up, tidings to tell: Whereat, astound of the fearful sight, I wist not what to do for fright._" And oft has my thought called up again These words of the changeful song: "_Wist thou thy pain and thy travàil To come, well might'st thou weep and wail!_" And our wail, O God! is long. But the song's end was all of his love; And well his heart was grac'd With her smiling lips and her tear-bright eyes As his arm went round her waist.