Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (276 page)

And the traitor held his torch in the gap,
 
All smoking and smouldering;
  
660
And through the vapor and fire, beneath
 
In the dark crypt’s narrow ring,
With a shout that pealed to the room’s high roof
 
They saw their naked King.

Half naked he stood, but stood as one
  
665
 
Who yet could do and dare;
With the crown, the King was stript away, —
The Knight was reft of his battle-array, —
 
But still the Man was there.

From the rout then stepped a villain forth, —
670
 
Sir John Hall was his name;
With a knife unsheathed he leapt to the vault
 
Beneath the torchlight-flame.

Of his person and stature was the King
 
A man right manly strong,
  
675
And mightily by the shoulder-blades
 
His foe to his feet he flung.

Then the traitor’s brother, Sir Thomas Hall,
 
Sprang down to work his worst;
And the King caught the second man by the neck
  
680
 
And flung him above the first.

And he smote and trampled them under him;
 
And a long month thence they bare
All black their throats with the grip of his hands
 
When the hangman’s hand came there.
  
685

And sore he strove to have had their knives,
 
But the sharp blades gashed his hands.
Oh James! so armed, thou hadst battled there
 
Till help had come of thy bands;
And oh! once more thou hadst held our throne
  
690
 
And ruled thy Scottish lands!

But while the King o’er his foes still raged
 
With a heart that nought could tame,
Another man sprang down to the crypt;
And with his sword in his hand hard-gripp’d
  
695
 
There stood Sir Robert Græme.

(Now shame on the recreant traitor’s heart
 
Who durst not face his King
Till the body unarmed was wearied out
 
With two-fold combating!
  
700

Ah! well might the people sing and say,
 
As oft ye have heard aright: —
“O Robert Græme, O Robert Græme,
Who slew our King, God give thee shame!”
 
For he slew him not as a knight.)
  
705

And the naked King turned round at bay,
 
But his strength had passed the goal,
And he could but gasp:— “Mine hour is come;
But oh! to succor thine own soul’s doom,
 
Let a priest now shrive my soul!”
  
710

And the traitor looked on the King’s spent strength,
 
And said:— “Have I kept my word? —
Yea, King, the mortal pledge that I gave?
No black friar’s shrift thy soul shall save,
 
But the shrift of this red sword!”
  
715

With that he smote his King through the breast;
 
And all they three in that pen
Fell on him and stabbed and stabbed him there
 
Like merciless murderous men.

Yet seemed it now that Sir Robert Græme,
  
720
 
Ere the King’s last breath was o’er,
Turned sick at heart with the deadly sight
 
And would have done no more.

But a cry came from the troop above:
 
“If him thou do not slay,
  
725
The price of his life that thou dost spare
 
Thy forfeit life shall pay!”

O God! what more did I hear or see,
 
Or how should I tell the rest?
But there at length our King lay slain
  
730
 
With sixteen wounds in his breast.

O God! and now did a bell boom forth,
 
And the murderers turned and fled; —
Too late, too late, O God, did it sound! —
And I heard the true men mustering round,
  
735
 
And the cries and the coming tread.

But ere they came to the black death-gap
 
Somewise did I creep and steal;
And lo! or ever I swooned away,
Through the dusk I saw where the white face lay
  
740
 
In the Pit of Fortune’s Wheel.

And now, ye Scottish maids who have heard
 
Dread things of the days grown old, —
Even at the last, of true Queen Jane
 
May somewhat yet be told,
  
745
And how she dealt for her dear lord’s sake
 
Dire vengeance manifold.

’Twas in the Charterhouse of Perth,
 
In the fair-lit Death-chapelle,
That the slain King’s corpse on bier was lain
  
750
 
With chant and requiem-knell.

And all with royal wealth of balm
 
Was the body purified:
And none could trace on the brow and lips
 
The death that he had died.
  
755

In his robes of state he lay asleep
 
With orb and sceptre in hand;
And by the crown he wore on his throne
 
Was his kingly forehead spann’d.

And, girls, ’twas a sweet sad thing to see
  
760
 
How the curling golden hair,
As in the day of the poet’s youth,
 
From the King’s crown clustered there.

And if all had come to pass in the brain
 
That throbbed beneath those curls,
  
765
Then Scots had said in the days to come
That this their soil was a different home
 
And a different Scotland, girls!

And the Queen sat by him night and day,
 
And oft she knelt in prayer,
  
770
All wan and pale in the widow’s veil
 
That shrouded her shining hair.

And I had got good help of my hurt:
 
And only to me some sign
She made; and save the priests that were there
  
775
 
No face would she see but mine.

And the month of March wore on apace;
 
And now fresh couriers fared
Still from the country of the Wild Scots
 
With news of the traitors snared.
  
780

And still as I told her day by day,
 
Her pallor changed to sight,
And the frost grew to a furnace-flame
 
That burnt her visage white.

And evermore as I brought her word,
  
785
 
She bent to her dead King James,
And in the cold ear with fire-drawn breath
 
She spoke the traitors’ names.

But when the name of Sir Robert Græme
 
Was the one she had to give,
  
790
I ran to hold her up from the floor;
For the froth was on her lips, and sore
 
I feared that she could not live.

And the month of March wore nigh to its end,
 
And still was the death-pall spread;
  
795
For she would not bury her slaughtered lord
 
Till his slayers all were dead.

And now of their dooms dread tidings came,
 
And of torments fierce and dire;
And nought she spake, — she had ceased to speak, —
800
 
But her eyes were a soul on fire.

But when I told her the bitter end
 
Of the stern and just award,
She leaned o’er the bier, and thrice three times
 
She kissed the lips of her lord.
  
805

And then she said,— “My King, they are dead!”
 
And she knelt on the chapel-floor,
And whispered low with a strange proud smile, —
 
“James, James, they suffered more!”

Last she stood up to her queenly height,
  
810
 
But she shook like an autumn leaf,
As though the fire wherein she burned
Then left her body, and all were turned
 
To winter of life-long grief.

And “O James!” she said,— “My James!” she said, —
815
 
“Alas for the woful thing,
That a poet true and a friend of man,
In desperate days of bale and ban,
 
Should needs be born a King!”

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Lovesight

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,)
  
5
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
  
10
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, —
How then should sound upon Life’s darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death’s imperishable wing?

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Heart’s Hope

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

BY what word’s power, the key of paths untrod,
Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,
Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore
Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod?
For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,
  
5
Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
Thee from myself, neither our love from God.
Yea, in God’s name, and Love’s, and thine, would I
Draw from one loving heart such evidence
  
10
As to all hearts all things shall signify;
Tender as dawn’s first hill-fire, and intense
As instantaneous penetrating sense,
In Spring’s birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Genius in Beauty

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

BEAUTYlike hers is genius. Not the call
Of Homer’s or of Dante’s heart sublime, —
Not Michael’s hand furrowing the zones of time, —
Is more with compassed mysteries musical;
Nay, not in Spring’s or Summer’s sweet footfall
  
5
More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes
Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes
Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.
As many men are poets in their youth,
But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong
  
10
Even through all change the indomitable song;
So in like wise the envenomed years, whose tooth
Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth,
Upon this beauty’s power shall wreak no wrong.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order