The Visions of England | Page 7

best of the land!
Down them with mace and with
brand!
The fell foreign arrow has crash'd to the brain;
England with
Harold the Englishman slain!
Yet they fought on for their England! of ineffaceable fame
Worthy,
and stood to the death, though the greedy sword, like a flame, Bit and
bit yet again in the solid ranks, and the dead
Heap where they die, and
hills of foemen about them are spread:--
--Hew down the heart of the land,
There, to a man, where they stand!


Till night with her blackness uncrimsons the stain,
And the
merciful shroud overshadows our slain.
Heroes unburied, unwept!--But a wan gray thing in the night Like a
marsh-wisp flits to and fro through the blood-lake, the steam of the
fight;
Turning the bodies, exploring the features with delicate touch;
Stumbling as one that finds nothing: but now!--as one finding too
much:
Love through mid-midnight will see:
Edith the fair! It is he!
Clasp
him once more, the heroic, the dear!
Harold was England: and Harold
lies here.
The hide of the tanyard; See the story of Arlette or Herleva, the tanner's
daughter, mother to William 'the Bastard.'
At Stamford; At Stamford Bridge, over the Derwent, Harold defeated
his brother Tostig and Harold Hardrada, Sep 25, 1066.
Your castle; Harold's triple palisade upon the hill of battle is so
described by the chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon.
Rome's gonfanon; The consecrated banner, sent to William from Rome.
The fierce standards; These were planted on the spot chosen by the
Conqueror for the high-altar of the Abbey of Battle. The Warrior was
Harold's 'personal ensign.'
In a summer to be; June 18, 1815.
The ventayle_; Used here for the _nasale or nose-piece shown in the
Bayeux Tapestry.
DEATH IN THE FOREST
August 2: 1100
Where the greenwood is greenest
At gloaming of day,
Where the

twelve-antler'd stag
Faces boldest at bay;
Where the solitude
deepens,
Till almost you hear
The blood-beat of the heart
As the
quarry slips near;
His comrades outridden
With scorn in the race,

The Red King is hallooing
His bounds to the chase.
What though the Wild Hunt
Like a whirlwind of hell
Yestereve ran
the forest,
With baying and yell:--
In his cups the Red heathen

Mocks God to the face;
--'In the devil's name, shoot;
Tyrrell, ho!--to
the chase!'
--Now with worms for his courtiers
He lies in the narrow
Cold
couch of the chancel!
--But whence was the arrow?
The dread vision of Serlo
That call'd him to die,
The weird
sacrilege terror
Of sleep, have gone by.
The blood of young Richard

Cries on him in vain,
In the heart of the Lindwood
By arbalest
slain.
And he plunges alone
In the Serpent-glade gloom,
As one
whom the Furies
Hound headlong to doom.
His sin goes before him,
The lust and the pride;
And the curses of
England
Breathe hot at his side.
And the desecrate walls
Of the
Evil-wood shrine
Lo, he passes--unheeding
Dark vision and sign:--
--Now with worms for his courtiers
He lies in the narrow
Cold
couch of the chancel:
--But whence was the arrow?
Then a shudder of death
Flicker'd fast through the wood:--

And
they found the Red King
Red-gilt in his blood.
What wells up in his
throat?
Is it cursing, or prayer?
Was it Henry, or Tyrrell,
Or
demon, who there
Has dyed the fell tyrant
Twice crimson in gore,

While the soul disincarnate
Hunts on to hell-door?
--Ah! friendless in death!
Rude forest-hands fling
On the
charcoaler's wain
What but now was the king!
And through the

long Minster
The carcass they bear,
And huddle it down
Without
priest, without prayer:--
Now with worms for his courtiers
He lies in the narrow
Cold couch
of the chancel:
--But whence was the arrow?
In his cups; Rufus, it is said, was 'fey,' as the old phrase has it, on the
day of his death. He feasted long and high, and then chose out two
cross-bow shafts, presenting them to Tyrrell with the exclamation given
above.
Serlo; He was Abbot of Gloucester, and had sent to Rufus the narrative
of an ominous dream, reported in the Monastery.
The true dreams; On his last night Rufus 'laid himself down to sleep,
but not in peace; the attendants were startled by the King's voice--a
bitter cry--a cry for help--a cry for deliverance--he had been suddenly
awakened by a dreadful dream, as of exquisite anguish befalling him in
that ruined church, at the foot of the Malwood rampart.' Palgrave: Hist.
of Normandy and of England, B. IV: ch. xii.
Young Richard; Son to Robert Courthose, and hunting, as his uncle's
guest, in the New Forest in May 1100, was mysteriously slain by a
heavy bolt from a Norman Arbalest.
The Evil-wood walls; 'Amongst the sixty churches which had been
'ruined,' my Father remarks, in his notice of the New Forest, 'the
sanctuary below the mystic Malwood was peculiarly remarkable. . . .
You reach the Malwood easily from the Leafy Lodge in the favourite
deer-walk, the Lind-hurst, the Dragon's wood.'
Through the long Minster; Winchester. Rufus, with much hesitation,
was buried in the chancel as a king; but no religious service or
ceremonial was celebrated:--'All men thought that prayers were
hopeless.'