They are very brief pictures, like sudden glimpses caught during a flash of lightning: a glimpse into an arena where two men are about to fight to the death in presence of their king, according to the code of the day; a knight riding through a flooded country in order to take a castle by surprise; a woman driven to madness by the murder of her lover; a woman at the stake about to be burned alive, when the sound of the hoofs of the lover's horse is heard, as he gallops to her rescue; ladies in the upper chamber of a castle, weaving and singing; the capture of a robber and his vain pleading for life; also some fairy tales of weird and sensuous beauty, told as people of the Middle Ages must have felt them. To me one of the most powerful pictures is the story of "The Haystack in the Floods." We are not told how the tragedy began, nor how it ended; and this is great art to tell something without beginning and without end, so well that the reader is always thereafter wondering what the beginning was and what the end might have been. The poem begins with the words: Had she come all the way for this To part at last without a kiss? Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain That her own eyes might see him slain Beside the haystack in the floods? We know from this only that the woman referred to is a woman of gentle birth, accustomed to luxurious things, so that it was very difficult for her to travel in rainy weather and cold, and that she thought it was a great sacrifice on her part to do so even for a lover. If she thought this, we have a right to suspect that she is a wanton--though we are not quite sure about it. The description of her does not explain anything further than the misery of the situation. Along the dripping leafless woods, The stirrup touching either shoe, She rode astride as troopers do; With kirtle kilted to her knee, To which the mud splashed wretchedly; And the wet dripp'd from every tree Upon her head and heavy hair, And on her eyelids broad and fair; The tears and rain ran down her face. The delicate woman has also the pain of being lonesome on her ride; for the lover, the knight, cannot ride beside her, cannot comfort her; he has to ride far ahead in order to see what danger may be in the road. He is running away with her; perhaps he is a stranger in that country; we shall presently see. Suddenly, nearby in the middle of a flooded place the enemy appears, a treacherous knight who is the avowed lover of the woman and the enemy of the man. She counts the number of spears with him--thirty spears, and they have but ten. Fighting is of no use, the woman says, but Robert (now we know for the first time the name of her companion) is not afraid--believes that by courage and skill alone he can scatter the hostile force, and bring his sweetheart over the river. She begs him not to fight; her selfishness shows her character--it is not for him she is afraid, but for herself.