So rode they swift and sure, and found A castle walled and dyked around: And Balen, as a warrior bound On search where hope might fear to sound The darkness of the deeps of doubt, Made entrance through the guardless gate As life, while hope in life grows great, Makes way between the doors of fate That death may pass thereout. Through many a glorious chamber, wrought For all delight that love’s own thought Might dream or dwell in, Balen sought And found of all he looked for nought, For like a shining shell her bed Shone void and vacant of her: thence Through devious wonders bright and dense He passed and saw with shame-struck sense Where shame and faith lay dead. Down in a sweet small garden, fair With flowerful joy in the ardent air, He saw, and raged with loathing, where She lay with love-dishevelled hair Beneath a broad bright laurel tree And clasped in amorous arms a knight, The unloveliest that his scornful sight Had dwelt on yet; a shame the bright Broad noon might shrink to see. And thence in wrathful hope he turned, Hot as the heart within him burned, To meet the knight whose love, so spurned And spat on and made nought of, yearned And dreamed and hoped and lived in vain, And said, “I have found her sleeping fast,” And led him where the shadows cast From leaves wherethrough light winds ran past Screened her from sun and rain. But Garnysshe, seeing, reeled as he stood Like a tree, kingliest of the wood, Half hewn through: and the burning blood Through lips and nostrils burst aflood: And gathering back his rage and might As broken breakers rally and roar The loud wind down that drives off shore, He smote their heads off: there no more Their life might shame the light. Then turned he back toward Balen, mad With grief, and said, “The grief I had Was nought: ere this my life was glad: Thou hast done this deed: I was but sad And fearful how my hope might fare: I had lived my sorrow down, hadst thou Not shown me what I saw but now.” The sorrow and scorn on Balen’s brow Bade silence curb him there. And Balen answered: “What I did I did to hearten thee and bid Thy courage know that shame should rid A man’s high heart of love that hid Blind shame within its core: God knows, I did, to set a bondman free, But as I would thou hadst done by me, That seeing what love must die to see Love’s end might well be woe’s.” “Alas,” the woful weakling said, “I have slain what most I loved: I have shed The blood most near my heart: the head Lies cold as earth, defiled and dead, That all my life was lighted by, That all my soul bowed down before, And now may bear with life no more: For now my sorrow that I bore Is twofold, and I die.”