Is more to the era, and in Messina’s beach-way Des Barres and Richard split the reed-lances And the coat is torn. (Moving in heavy air: Henry and Saladin.) (The serpent coils in the crowd.) The letters run: Tancred to Richard: That the French King is More against thee, than is his will to me Good and in faith; and moves against your safety. Richard to Tancred: That our pact stands firm, And, for these slanders, that I think you lie. Proofs, and in writing: And if Bourgogne say they were not Deliver’d by hand and his, Let him move sword against me and my word. Richard to Philip: silence, with a tone. Richard to Flanders: the subjoined and precedent. Philip a silence; and then, “Lies and turned lies “For that he will fail Alix “Affianced, and Sister to Ourself.” Richard: “My father’s bed-piece! A Plantagenet “Mewls on the covers, with a nose like his, already.” Then: In the Name Of Father and of Son Triune and Indivisible Philip of France by Goddes Grace To all men presents that our noble brother Richard of England engaged by mutual oath (a sacred covenant applicable to both) Need _not_ wed Alix but whomso he choose We cede him Gisors Neauphal and Vexis And to the heirs male of his house Cahors and Querci Richard’s the abbeys ours Of Figeac and Souillac St. Gilles left still in peace Alix returns to France. Made in Messina in The year 1190 of the Incarnation of the Word. Reed lances broken, a cloak torn by Des Barres Do turn King Richard from the holy wars. And “God aid Conrad “For man’s aid comes slow,” Aye tarries upon the road, En Bertrans cantat. And before all this By Correze, Malemort A young man walks, at church with galleried porch By river-marsh, pacing, He was come from Ventadorn; and Eleanor turning on thirty years, Domna jauzionda, and he says to her “My lady of Ventadorn “Is shut by Eblis in, and will not hawk nor hunt “Nor get her free in the air, nor watch fish rise to bait “Nor the glare-wing’d flies alight in the creek’s edge “Save in my absence, Madame. ‘_Que la lauzeta mover_,’ “Send word, I ask you, to Eblis, you have seen that maker “And finder of songs, so far afield as this “That he may free her, who sheds such light in the air.” THE SEVENTH CANTO