The king’s self, stern and pallid Gazed on the lad that day, And as if dreams were on him Besought him gently: ‘Say, Bertrand de Gourdon! wherefore Thou tak’st my life away?’ ‘To venge my martyr-father, My foster-brethren three: In the name of thy dead foemen This thing I did to thee!’ And Richard perished, sighing: ‘Forgive him. Set him free!’ Alas for that late loving By seneschals betrayed! While yet upon his lashes The holy tear delayed, They bound Bertrand de Gourdon, They slew him in the glade. Alas for noble spirits Whom fates perverse befall! Whence David in his beauty Gave healing unto Saul, The jeering wind beats ever On Chaluz castle wall. THE WOOING PINE. THERE was a lady, starshine in her look, Of lineage fierce, yet tremulous and kind As the field-gossamer, that down the wind Floats gleamingly from some enthistled nook; And wayward as her beauty was her mind That evermore bright errant journeys took. Her father’s houndish lords she moved among, From feud and uproar dewily distraught; Winnowed her harp of its least pain; and brought Delight’s full freshet to a beggar’s tongue, Or spun amid her maids with chapel-thought That on a crystal pivot burned and swung. But night on night, an exile from sleek rest, She nestled warm before her hearth-fire low, To watch its little wind-born planets go Orbing; and from the martyr-oak’s charred breast, In spirit-blue flame, in quintuple wild glow, The tossing leaves prolong their summer zest. And ailingly, she needs must often sigh, Perplexèd out of her rich wonted glee, Whereof some unseen warder kept the key, And quell the dark defiance of her eye In patience, as a torch dips in the sea. And so, in brooding, went the white days by. Unto the horsemen brave in war’s array She waved no token from her latticed house, Nor yet of princelings bare upon her brows Love’s salutation; but from such as they Turned, as a shy brook wheels from jutting boughs, And in a sidelong glimmer sobs away Her sealèd sense beheld no man, nor heard, Nor lent its troth to any mortal bond, But lived heart-full of vital light beyond, And with miraculous tides of being stirred, Lingering tho’ eager, till the forest fond Winged to its own pure peace this homing bird. For, sad with rains of unrevealed desire, And heavy with predestined glory’s beam, She to the water-girdled wood’s extreme Stole from her suitors’ pleas, her father’s ire, Far from their brambly ways to sit and dream, And make sweet plaint, in daylight’s dying fire;