To bear the trial, the stern review,
All creatures small are loath to do,
But him I write of, when at large,
I think would stand up at the charge:
He'd dare a shot from levelled gun,
On oath he did it just for fun,
Or pose a duel, with kindly smile,
If only to the time beguile.
In blood a Welshman, and much given,
On nights of storm and raging heaven,
To settle on some tavern hall,
And push with skill a billiard ball,
It was a shock to be thus led
Into the wild by the dead.
But word, though faint, had lately travelled
Which half the mystery unraveled,
About a vain and jealous king,
Who loved the hunt, and marrying,
Though Grant himself did think it odd,
One who, as mighty as a god,
One who, as mighty as a god,
Could not to other pastimes yield,
Than beauty's cheek, or untrod field.
But some rely on simple things,
And scoff the call to eagle's wings;
Monks cowl and robe their mind repulses,
As if they end in bleeding ulcers.
But such a fellow was king Lot
Who man and maid had often bought,
Both whom he sold at country fairs;
And others kept in sordid lairs.
Now Grant Brisbane, with mind awake,
Is sprinting cross the castle’s lake.
His horse, with snout set towards the coast,
Cares not a rush he left his post
As Anglesey’s unerring guard.
- Its brains, in truth, more soft than hard,
Were like his own, beyond repair,
Although that's neither here nor there...
But on Grant rode, and pricked the beach,
As trooper at a fortress breach,
With scarce one thought except to know
What made a distant light to glow.
“Men, I think! – those torches shining,
"That banshee smoke so wildly twining!
"Ah, this is that which long had brought
"To me the penalties of thought!"
This, we know, is kin to madness,
To others still, a cause of sadness;
But being bored beyond all reason,
Coaxed him farther to this treason;
And so he raced. With steady heel,
The beast he gored with rowels of steel
Drew blood, and yet he stayed his pace,
Each thoughtof fear -- he gave no place,
But only cared to stay alive,
Not guessing where he would arrive.
...It was a leafy hill enshrined
By rude hemlocks, hanging in the wind,
And in its lawn a kind of ghost,
In mantle torn, whose teeth disclosed,
Most viperlike and heathanish,
A skull-like head, you would not wish
To view at night, although perhaps
I can't speak for the mental chaps.
This strain of fancies overwrought,
Usurped Grant's sense, and hindered thought,
So that he changed his cheerful mien,
To one more suiting bloody scene.
Although our modern painters would
Prefer a little riding hood,
Mean looked the horseman, clothed, as said,
Like one attendant on the dead,
A thing awakened by the god,
To taunt and test each wandering clod.
Now distant, grave, he stared him down,
Grant's faith to sink, his hopes to drown,
O, what evil more death-dealing,
Than blank ineptitude of feeling!
How bad it is to lose one's wits!
Who loses that, their life forfeits.
Still holding to a false control,
Grant backed away from this blear soul,
And contemplated as he rode,
If by such fear he might explode.
It's true enough, these were the days
The suicide more greatly pays,
But Grant, though brave, was no great sinner,
If not superb in all his ways....
What's more, he had not had his dinner;
Which in truth more cherished he
Than modern maid, virginity.
But heart afire and beating chest,
He stemmed all fear, while on he pressed
His horse into a leaping dash,
Praying, lest the charger crash.
Of fear ashamed, yet fearful still,
Grant clambered up a fairy hill,
By limbs embowered, a mystic glen
Set far away from kings and men.
All 'round was wreathed in softest white,
With winter flowers undimmed by night,
That glowed until they scarce seemed real,
It tokened so much the ideal.
Here, pungent odors filled his head
With musings of uncertain dread,
As they wafted in his brain.
Turning his steed, with loosened rein,
He fell - it ran off, - rare mischance!
Now laid below the brooding glance
Of such as he had never seen,
And all would say had never been,
He quailed. Then round this knight to shame,
The spirits swirled, till, without name,
Or memory, or self it seemed,
He was destroyed! But never deemed
He should die thus, he still pursued,
His course with honor unsubdued.
Amidst a pall of branches stretched
Like webs wherein the dews are fetched,
And through the hedges dark and dry,
Scarce moved by aught but fledgeling's cry,
The ghosts gave chase, while crushing toes,
And foaming mouths, increased Grant's woes.
Their laugh and their hard-tempered swords,
Rise painfully; their wrathful words,
The air afflict. The specter crew,
A score of miles this way pursued.
Right swift they rode, till, had they been
Mere living horses, living men,
Their forms would be but one great mass
Of wounds and bones like splintered glass;
And yet there was a thing amiss,
In those dead eyes, in that tongue’s hiss.
II Comes To Diadre’s House
He reached, with joy, an olden place,
That warm, familiar thoughts could trace.
It was a mossy cottage door –
The shelter of a damsel poor
He knew and loved in youth’s fair day.
If still he loved it’s hard to say,
It’d been so long, and he had lost
-For time will do this free of cost –
Much of his looks, a source of pride,
All must admit, and less will hide;
For he had met her that time when
The sun, just rolling from its den,
Reflected off a gentle tide
That slept along the riverside,
In the season late which blushes
With florets amid the rushes,
And meadows seem a thing between
Lovely and sad when they are seen;
Though really that was no concern,
For now that thing which none can earn. –
His life – was on the razor edge,
He had no time therefore to pledge
A cup to fancies in his brain,
For so to do, in short’s, not sane.
Had he known then Deidre’s story,
O, the dame would lose much glory!
For she, once won by honest man,
By worse was sought, now from him ran.
If Grant but knew, he'd take the track
Which led through hell, just to get back
Into a merely common den
Of selfish and conniving men.
He would have gone another way,
But alas! He'd been for many a day
On Palestine’s gold haunted sands,
Right faithful to his king’s commands,
And had not word from smith or squire. -
Nor was the tale yet put to lyre
By minstrel, who too oft wastes breath
In making light of sin and death.
Nor had he heard a cell contained,
On her account, a luckless swain,
Who’d dared her hand, and one night slept,
To wake in jail, of hope bereft,
Of comforts lost, and how they came
In full steel armor for their game,
He would not seek so high in love
Again, not he, nor taste air above.
The rest of her sad tale is short
(Though it grew taller at the court)
The maid was poor - her sire unwise,
And by a scheme that Lot devised,
Which was the name of that great lord,
(Who ev’n his lowly dog abhorred)
Had urged her father to the tilt -
The girl as prize - with no blood spilt,
Into his hand; and thence would follow
Such guerdon as might vanquish sorrow,
For well he knew the man constrained
By poverty’s malignant rein,
But on this pretext, all was show –
He laid him still six feet below.
The pinkish embers lightly shone
On Diadre’s hearth, like sunlit stone,
At dawn, when peasants calmy lie
Not urged by want, to lift the eye.
And here Grant looked through casement gray,
As jubilant as his natal day
All seemed therein; whilst hope, the dove,
That moves and lives by the breath of love,
Made him wish long hours to 'guile
In the sunbeam of that kindly smile.
For just such was sweet Diadre’s way,
Although she said her nerves would fray
On nights like this, when all alone,
The boughs would crack with mournful tone,
And high into the balmy air
The sighs of ghosts would follow there.
But thus it was with vengeful Lot,
Who still had not this maiden caught,
And who would oft his forays close
In upon this well-hid rose,
To seek again to augment pain
Tho Diadre’s health is on the wane.
To die? Not he! Nor could relent.
A moment more, his strength was spent;
As, with both fists strong cased in mail,
He rapt the door, to no avail!
He cursed, poor fool, against the lock
Which kept him out; but ceased to knock
When, unbeknownst, an iron hand
Fell on his shoulder with command.
He swung his sword, not reckoning where,
As turning round, no foe was there.
"Where's thy gauntlet, where, thou spirit?
Tell me, you there! I know. I hear it!"
All was silence; the cold rain skimmed
Into his eyes, as, half- bedimmed,
They held a vague but cheery light -
A ray of hope in his sad plight.
A sliding bolt, and voice composed,
Which seemed towards strangers well disposed,
With sapphire eyes and carmine lips,
All beauty to her fingertips,
A bosom round that swelled with jewels,
And overlooked by none but fools,
Was at the door; she found alone,
A stranger whom she once had known,
And all the finery that she wore,
Surprised the knight, for he was poor.
III Diadre And Grant
“Who goes?” thus spoke the maiden calm,
"Who rouses me from my bed?"
Her words so like a soothing balm,
Distilled from pages of a tear-filled psalm,
Flitted madly through Grant’s head.
“Diadre,” Grant cried, “Oh, for shame,
I know my earlier boldness came
To you, once, too rash, and strong;
That once, in truth, I acted wrong,
But do, by Heaven, this forgive -
For, truth is, I have one plan–to live!
Alone if it must be, tis fine,
I ask not for a thing divine
Before aught else, take pity please!”
All he spoke upon his knees.
“O Sir,” said she, aghast, “How great
It galls to see one thus abused,
And such, if I mistake not fate,
Is your sad case, Sir Poorly Used.
Thus brought by God, thou know’st I shall
Invite thee once inside my hall.”
The lady, thus overcome by grief,
So soon accorded his relief.
IV Battle With Lot’s Men
He entered in, though half ashamed,
Like one who feels himself unclaimed
By earth, or mother, all alone
‘Neath heaven where the constant sun
Has for the stars unequalled court.
These reveries, of no lasting sort,
Were by great havoc soon dispelled,
When, aiming true, and aiming right
Into the untraceable night,
Grant must his usual sense forego.
He felt – and heard – and knew his foe
By breath, which in the chilly air
Made icicles of their matted hair.
And thus his sword, raised up, fell fast
To lay again this earth-outcast.
Full of thought and terror, ranging
All about, like fires unchanging,
Glowed his haggard eyes; whilst never
In all of war’s hard strife or fever,
Of forcing a paladin back
With shivered lance, in armed attack,
Had he so fought, as when these men
Sought ardently his life to end.
Amidst this fray, where sight was vain,
And nothing heard but sounds of pain
Within the circle of the wood,
A space of silence, which seemed to brood
Upon the next assault, occurred.
Now Diadre spoke, in a whispered word –
"I've seen this! I was sitting late,
One night when came, by God or fate,
A man of this same horse and crest.
‘Twas Grant, whom I've held in her breast
As dearest of all men, and he alone
Will vanquish Lot, to him unknown."
Encouraged thus by her report,
He took up with the sweltering sport;
And everywhere the knights fell back,
Or laid in piles of red and black;
Diadre too, a steel mace wielding,
Grant at times her figure shielding.
Of these, the largest, Grant supposed,
Cried the worst or bled the most,
As, Samson-like, but not as vain,
They strewed the earth with heaps of slain.
Satisfied, and safely breathing,
The couple thought it time for leaving.
V Fleeing To Safety
But on their way, Grant longed to hear
More from this youngish lady seer,
Of how himself did one night come
Into her heart, and find her home.
She was too glad to speak, for now
It seemed they shared one life below
That heaven, which such gifts unsought
Do find us, though we mark it not.
A joy to share, ecstasy too
Did all their hopes and thoughts imbue -
And yet there were some sorrows still,
Meant more to maim than add to thrill:
A net sprung by, they saw not whom,
Lifted up. Now here was little room
To do much more than jerk and flail,
But thus suspended in the air,
They railed and said O, fate be fair!
And then approached a man in mail.
VI Recaptured
This outlaw, not unknown, though gray,
To Diadre's eyes, did all of death display;
For well she understood, with fear,
As waves that mount on troubled weir,
Till bursting and the land destroy,
Her fate: to be Lot’s wife and toy.
She wept – again her crystal tears
Fell fast from those empallaced spheres,
Her eyes, though scarce it marred her beauty.
Now stifled, in a raging sea
Of hate, she trailed the vengeful Lord,
Not daring speak, nor utter word;
For that she held too good for him
Whose very life the seraphim
Of heaven could not save. The miles
How far! Stretched on to drier depths
Of sadness, where no hope caressed
Or kissed the brow - in dreaming sought -
And called on faith, but felt it not.
At night Lot hears her heaving breath:
A sound of calm and peaceful death
Seems all that Diadre dreams. She lives
For him, whom no desire deceived.
And conscious of her haughty brow
Lot growls, “She’s with another now,”
That man who with a fiery heart,
Or what he deemed was magic art,
Had entered in her dreams, the one
They say who was a blacksmiths son,
And nothing more. Grant, he is called.
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