A thing of not much moment, as life goes, A thing a man with some philosophy Had idly brushed aside, as 't were a gnat That winged itself between him and the light, Had, through the crooked working of his mind, Brought Wyndham to a very grievous pass. Yet 't was a grapestone choked Anacreon And hushed his song. There is no little thing In nature: in a raindrop's compass lie A planet's elements. This Wyndham's woe Was one Griselda, daughter to a man Of Bideford, a shipman once, but since Turned soldier; now in white-haired, wrinkled age Sitting beneath the olive, valiant still, With sword on nail above the chimney-shelf In case the Queen should need its edge again. An officer he was, though lowly born. The man aforetime, in the Netherlands And through those ever-famous French campaigns (Marry, in what wars bore he not a hand?) In Rawdon Wyndham's troop of horse had served, And when he fell that day by Calais wall Had from the Frenchmen's pikes his body snatched, And so much saved of him, which was not much, The good knight being dead. For this deed's sake, That did enlarge itself in sorrow's eye, The widow deemed all guerdon all too small, And held her dear lord's servant and his girl, Born later, when that clash of steel was done, As her own kin, till she herself was laid I' the earth and sainted elsewhere. The two sons Let cool the friendship: one in foreign parts Did gold and honor seek; at hall stayed one, The heir, and now of old friends negligent: Thus fortune hardens the ignoble heart. Griselda even as a little maid, Demure, but with more crotchets in the brain, I warrant ye, than minutes to the hour, Had this one much misliked; in her child-thought Confused him somehow with those cruel shapes Of iron men that up there at The Towers Quickened her pulse. For he was gaunt, his face, Mature beyond the logic of his years, Had in it something sinister and grim, Like to the visage pregnant fancy saw Behind the bars of each disused casque In that east chamber where the harness hung And dinted shields of Wyndhams gone to grace-- At Poitiers this one, this at Agincourt, That other on the sands of Palestine: A breed of fierce man-slayers, sire and son. Of these seemed Richard, with his steel cross-bow Killing the doves in very wantonness-- The gentle doves that to the ramparts came For scattered crumbs, undreamful of all ill. Each well-sent dart that stained a snowy breast Straight to her own white-budding bosom went. Fled were those summers now, and she had passed Out of the child-world of vain fantasy Where many a rainbow castle lay in ruin; But to her mind, like wine-stain to a flask, The old distrust still clung, indelible,