Then said Earl Doorm: “Well, if he be not dead, Why wail ye for him thus? ye seem a child. And be he dead, I count you for a fool; Your wailing will not quicken him: dead or not, Ye mar a comely face with idiot tears. Yet, since the face is comely—some of you, Here, take him up, and bear him to our hall: An if he live, we will have him of our band; And if he die, why earth has earth enough To hide him. See ye take the charger too, A noble one.” He spake, and past away, But left two brawny spearmen, who advanced, Each growling like a dog, when his good bone Seems to be plucked at by the village boys Who love to vex him eating, and he fears To lose his bone, and lays his foot upon it, Gnawing and growling: so the ruffians growled, Fearing to lose, and all for a dead man, Their chance of booty from the morning’s raid, Yet raised and laid him on a litter-bier, Such as they brought upon their forays out For those that might be wounded; laid him on it All in the hollow of his shield, and took And bore him to the naked hall of Doorm, (His gentle charger following him unled) And cast him and the bier in which he lay Down on an oaken settle in the hall, And then departed, hot in haste to join Their luckier mates, but growling as before, And cursing their lost time, and the dead man, And their own Earl, and their own souls, and her. They might as well have blest her: she was deaf To blessing or to cursing save from one. So for long hours sat Enid by her lord, There in the naked hall, propping his head, And chafing his pale hands, and calling to him. Till at the last he wakened from his swoon, And found his own dear bride propping his head, And chafing his faint hands, and calling to him; And felt the warm tears falling on his face; And said to his own heart, “She weeps for me:” And yet lay still, and feigned himself as dead, That he might prove her to the uttermost, And say to his own heart, “She weeps for me.”