There were
four of us about that bed;
The mass-priest knelt at the side,
I and his
mother stood at the head,
Over his feet lay the bride;
We were
quite sure that he was dead,
Though his eyes were open wide.
He did not
die in the night,
He did not die in the day,
But in the
morning twilight
His spirit pass’d away,
When
neither sun nor moon was bright,
And the trees were merely gray.
He was not
slain with the sword,
Knight’s axe, or the knightly spear,
Yet spoke
he never a word
After he came in here;
I cut away
the cord
From the neck of my brother dear.
He did not
strike one blow,
For the recreants came behind,
In a place
where the hornbeams grow,
A path right hard to find,
For the
hornbeam boughs swing so
That the twilight makes it blind.
They lighted
a great torch then;
when his arms were pinion’d fast,
Sir John
the knight of the Fen,
Sir Guy of the Dolorous Blast,
With
knights threescore and ten,
Hung brave Lord Hugh at last.
I am
threescore and ten,
And my hair is all turn’d gray,
But I met
Sir John of the Fen
Long ago on a summer day,
And am glad
to think of the moment when
I took his life away.
I am
threescore and ten,
And my strength is mostly past,
But long
ago I and my men,
When the sky was overcast,
And the
smoke roll’d over the reeds of the fen,
Slew Guy of the Dolorous Blast.
And now,
knights all of you,
I pray you
pray for Sir Hugh,
A good
knight and a true,
And for
Alice, his wife, pray too.
