“Ha! nurse of her that was my bane, Name not her name to me; I wish it blotted from my brain: Art poor?—take alms, and flee.” “Sir Knight,” the Abbot interposed, “This case your ear demands;” And the crone cried, with a cross enclosed In both her trembling hands:— “Remember, each his sentence waits; And he that shall rebut Sweet Mercy’s suit, on him the gates Of Mercy shall be shut. “You wedded, undispensed by Church, Your cousin Jane in Spring; In Autumn, when you went to search For churchmen’s pardoning, “Her house denounced your marriage-band, Betrothed her to De Grey, And the ring you put upon her hand Was wrenched by force away. “Then wept your Jane upon my neck, Crying, ‘Help me, nurse, to flee To my Howel Bann’s Glamorgan hills;’ But word arrived—ah me!— “You were not there; and ’twas their threat, By foul means or by fair, To-morrow morning was to set The seal on her despair. “I had a son, a sea-boy, in A ship at Hartland Bay; By his aid from her cruel kin I bore my bird away. “To Scotland from the Devon’s Green myrtle shores we fled; And the Hand that sent the ravens To Elijah, gave us bread. “She wrote you by my son, but he From England sent us word You had gone into some far countrie, In grief and gloom he heard. “For they that wronged you, to elude Your wrath, defamed my child; And you—ay, blush, Sir, as you should— Believed, and were beguiled. “To die but at your feet, she vowed To roam the world; and we Would both have sped and begged our bread, But so it might not be. “For when the snow-storm beat our roof, She bore a boy, Sir Bann, Who grew as fair your likeness proof As child e’er grew like man. “’Twas smiling on that babe one morn While heath bloomed on the moor, Her beauty struck young Lord Kinghorn As he hunted past our door. ‘She shunned him, but he raved of Jane, And roused his mother’s pride; Who came to us in high disdain,— ‘And where’s the face,’ she cried, “‘Has witched my boy to wish for one So wretched for his wife?— Dost love thy husband? Know, my son Has sworn to seek his life.’ “Her anger sore dismayed us, For our mite was wearing scant, And unless that dame would aid us, There was none to aid our want. “So I told her, weeping bitterly, What all our woes had been; And though she was a stern ladie, The tears stood in her een. “And she housed us both, when, cheerfully, My child to her had sworn, That even if made a widow, she Would never wed Kinghorn.”—— Here paused the nurse, and then began The Abbot, standing by:— “Three months ago a wounded man To our abbey came to die. “He heard me long, with ghastly eyes And hand obdurate clenched, Speak of the worm that never dies, And the fire that is not quenched.