by Frank Norris
“Draw off your hounds, — give up the deer,
And if, departing straight from here,
Due reparation ye shall make,
We’ll stint to further justice take.
What think ye, then, though for your lands
And his a common bound’ry stands,
Ye may unquestioned kill his stags
Beneath his castle’s very flags?”
Straight o’er the brow of Raguenel
A thunder-cloud of deep wrath fell:
“Morbleu, Sir Knight, such hardihood
‘Twere well to punish with thy blood.
Know that the house of Voysvenel
Was friendly e’er to Raguenel.
Allied by every tie but blood,
For them such boundary ne’er stood.
That such bonds should be closer tied
To him, my ward was pledged a bride;
But who art thou who thus must needs
Call us to question for our deeds?”
The Knight his vizor quickly raised;
Raguenel, as on his face he gazed
Like one a sudden vision daunts,
Stood wonder-stricken for the nonce,
While through the throng from man to man
A sudden, swelling murmur ran.
And Yvernelle in mute surprise
Just caught her breath and dropped her eyes,
And then Sir Raguenel burst forth:
“Now once more welcome to the north;
Let anger cease, foul doubt dispel,
’Tis he. ’Tis he. ’Tis Voysvenel!”
Leaping from off his panting steed,
In joyous tones the Knight loud said:
“Not e’en in jest could I prolong
High words with thee. Forgive the wrong;
The playful strife is at an end.
Give me thy hand, O noble friend!
And ye, brave yeomen of my land,
Let me clasp close each several hand.
Ah! Raguenel, but to be here,
To breathe once more my native air,
To tread with bounding step again
The hills and valleys of Touraine,
Makes these long months seem like a trance
That I have passed away from France.
I tell thee truly, Raguenel—”
But ceased, for he saw Yvernelle.
Then all his love in radiance bright
Broke o’er his face like breaking light;
One eager glance he gave his bride
Then instantly was at her side.
With deepest joy to his broad breast
Her half-reluctant form he pressed,
And on her fair hands once again
Showered his kisses fond, like rain.
“Nay, then, her lips, — her lips as well!”
Cried happily old Raguenel.
And Yvernelle once on him gazed,
Then trustingly her lips upraised.
Gently o’er her he bent his head,
Then, all at once, sprang back in dread;
For on his ear in accents hoarse
Rang Guhaldrada’s parting curse:
“Let my deep curse round her be shed
Drear as the pall that sheets the dead;
And cursed the lips that next shall press
Thine own in lover’s fond caress!”
He started back with quivering bound,
Then stood, as rooted to the ground.
The throng beheld, as though spell-bound;
A silence fell on all around.
And Yvernelle in pained surprise
To Voysvenel upturned her eyes;
And then outspoke Sir Raguenel:
“What means this, kinsman? Art not well?
Thy brow is pale. Speak, let me know.
Sure not her kiss affects thee so?
What, silent yet? Now, by the Rood!
Thou hast returned in mumming mood.
If for a moment’s time I thought
Thou play’dst with us or trifled aught
With this young heart that loves thee so,
By great St. Remy! I — but no,
This still is but thy merry jest,
And, though ’tis somewhat over-pressed,
I’d jest with thee did it not grieve
A heart ‘twere fiend-like to deceive.
Yet hold, — no jesting face is here, —
No jester e’er such grief could wear!
Thou’rt not thyself! Speak, Voysvenel!
Thou’rt meshed in some entangling spell.
Hence, comrades! Now, O Caverlaye!
To me, as to your father, say,
Say that beneath this seeming slight
Some reason good is hid from sight!”
Then for one moment, hard repressed
In Caverlaye’s sore tortured breast,
Sprang there an impulse brave and true
To lay bare all its faults to view,
Reveal the past, confess his sin,
Place all his fate their hands within.
Yet quick he shrank to own that he
Was proved of infidelity;
He feared that she would not forgive,
Feared that Sir Raguenel ne’er would give
Consent his hand o’er hers to clasp
Fresh from another’s fevered grasp, —
He, that an hundred battles dared,
Within himself now owned he feared,
And so, in voice suppressed and low,
He bent his eyes and answered, “No.”
He felt himself in grievous plight;
For should he speak, bring all to light,
He felt his words would sound the knell
Of all his hopes with Yvernelle.
And yet, if he should hold his peace,
Nor give his struggling thoughts release,
For her ’twould surely show, he knew,
That he to her had been untrue.
And, for the curse, he did not dare
With his to touch her lips so fair.
Betwixt his lips a poison lay
To blight her happiness for aye;
Yet if he spared that fateful kiss,
Before him — saw but bitterness.
But how relate — how fitly tell
The anguish of sweet Yvernelle?
With marble brow and tearless eye
She’d stood intent for his reply,
And when it fell upon her ear
Her life’s dear light died out for her.
Was, then, his love from her estranged?
Had absence short his heart so changed?
Still did she shrink all hope to leave,
Still would she, faithful, him believe.
Her grief had overcome her pride,
One last supreme appeal she tried,
One hand in his broad palm she laid,
And calm and tenderly she said:
“O noble-minded Voysvenel,
Still I believe you love me well,
And though, but now, through some disdain
You smote my heart with deepest pain,
Gladly the deed will I forget
If you but prove you love me yet.
Still faithful do I trust your love,
Oh, I beseech that love you prove!”
Sir Caverlaye was stout of heart
As Oliver or Ascaparte;
Yet scarce his valor stood his need
To do the seeming cruel deed.
With eyes his harshness all belied
He gently put her from his side,
And bowed his head in misery
And faintly said, “It may not be.”
Then, in a rage that furious burned,
Old Raguenel upon him turned:
“Now, by our Lady’s radiant front,
To me thou’lt answer this affront.
Let ev’ry bond of friendship’s chain
Be from this moment snapped in twain.
Henc
eforward till death lays us low
We stand to each as foe to foe.
Here, here, to thine eternal shame,
I brand thee with a traitor’s name!
And on thy body will I prove
The charge. False Knight, there lies my glove.”
Rampant, like blaze of living fire,
Leaped Caverlaye’s deep-seated ire;
Yet e’en this too was to be borne,
For all his pride he could not turn;
E’en when so openly defied
His wrath was curbed, his hands were tied.
And so the quick retort he stayed,
And to Sir Raguenel he said:
“Refrain from taunting, bitter word;
Take up your glove, re-sheathe your sword;
He that is loved of Yvernelle
Is sacred e’er to Voysvenel.”
Perplexed stood Raguenel for a space,
With deep scorn wreathed about his face;
Then Caverlaye a moment eyed,
And thus in calm disdain replied:
“Till now, I thought that busy fame
With valor had allied thy name;
And yet, in truth, I should not seem
Surprised to find this, too, a dream.
To Falsehood Fear is comrade meet,
And Cowardice becomes deceit.
Enough! we barter vain words light.
This last advice to thee, Sir Knight:
Look well unto thy moated keep,
Be watchful lest thy warders sleep,
And let thy rout of men-at-arms
Be vigilant against alarms;
And for thyself, on land or sea,
Sir Knight, God keep thee well from me.
Come, Yvernelle, allay thy fears;
He is not worthy of these tears.”
Weary, she leant on him for aid;
They turned them from the leafy glade.
Sir Caverlaye, with anguished heart
And yearning eyes, watched them depart;
Stepped forward with unsteady tread,
Paused, clasped his hands above his head,
Grasped for support a gnarled tree,
And called her name despairingly.
She heard, and, pausing ere she went,
Backward her eyes’ love-light she bent,
Backward upon his dark despair
Like sunlight on a murky air;
Stretched forth her arms in love and woe,
And sighed in tender accents low:
“O life, O love, O joys that swell
Love’s trusting heart, farewell! farewell!
Love’s little day its course hath run;
Already its fast-westering sun,
Passing its zenith pure and bright,
Fades, — fades and pales upon my sight.
Already its last lingering ray
Gleams fitful thwart life’s twilight gray,
And twilight’s breezes’ trembling breath
Whispers the coming night of death.
But oh, if yet beyond the skies
Haply a morning sun may rise,
Till then, O my beloved, I wait;
Wait till the crooked is made straight,
Wait till all tears have ceased to flow,
Wait till each other’s hearts we know;
Then till rejoined beyond life’s flood,
Then till my love be understood,
Then till my heart by you is seen,
I wait, calm, trusting, and serene.”
When her last words melodious fell
Upon the ear of Voysvenel
As soft, yet e’en as piteous
As some sweet-knelling Angelus;
When, like the sun passed from the skies,
Her vision vanished from his eyes, —
The pent-up floodgates of his heart
With rushing sorrow burst apart
Beneath its tide ‘whelmed suddenly,
He let his grief have mastery.
Prone on his face the grass among
Himself in misery he flung,
And clinched his teeth in frenzied clasp
Against each sob and quivering gasp.
Thus, in the depth of that dark wood
Long time he lay stretched on the sod,
So still, at length the rabbits gray
Came hopping timid where he lay.
His grazing steed unheeded strayed
With trailing bridle down the glade;
And the dead deer beside him lay,
Fall’n where his life-blood ebbed away,
The pain of his last wild death-cry
Still left in his half-human eye.
Fierce was the pain when through his heart
Had cut the keen and biting dart,
But fiercer pain burned unrepressed
Within the strong man’s tortured breast.
Now was the day departing slow;
The wearied sun was bending low
From his huge arc that heaven spanned
To kiss the warm and fragrant land.
Each battlement and fretted spire
In echoing light flashed back his fire.
Earthward he wheeled in radiant heat,
The sparks struck ‘neath his courser’s feet,
As wheeling down to earth he came,
Kindled the west to glowing flame;
While thwart that west which blazing shone
Long streaming golden clouds were strewn,
That seemed the streaming manes back blown
From those fierce coursers of the sun;
Then came the twilight soft and gray,
The gentle child of night and day;
Anon night’s pinions were unfurled,
And silence settled o’er the world.
CANTO II. HOW SIR CAVERLAYE AND THE WYVERN KNIGHT MET IN DEADLY COMBAT.
WITHIX a forest’s tangled heart,
Far from the fief of Brittomarte,
Some three leagues as the swart crow flies,
A little stone-built bridge there lies, —
A relic of the Roman day
When Cæsar’s legions held the sway
Of Gaul, — when Roman skill and art
Subdued the might of Gallic heart.
Scarce wider than the dun deer’s leap,
Than his slim fetlock not as deep,
With dimpling cheek and laughing eye
The little stream goes dancing by.
Beneath its rippling wavelets fleet
The hemlocks bathe their gnarled feet,
O’er it the oaks their strong arms cast
To shield it ‘gainst the boist’rous blast.
Its bottom where their shadows sleep
With fallen leaves is bedded deep.
At half a spear’s cast from the bridge
(Thatched with the sun-dried matted sedge,
Built half with stone and half with peat,
And set back from the dusty heat,
That all day shimmered from the road,
Winding throughout the lonely wood)
A little hut, with vines o’ergrown,
Nestles secluded and alone.
Long time abandoned had it stood
In quiet peace and solitude.
But time there was, the legend said,
When there a saintly hermit stayed.
St. Cuthbert was this hermit’s name,
And to the wood, the bridge, the stream,
The name of Cuthbert had been given
Long after he was called to heaven.
There had he lived while life remained;
Though oft in want, he ne’er complained;
Bowed down with age, all gaunt and gray,
Telling his beads the live-long day,
Clothed in the penance shirt of hair,
And nourished on the meanest fare; —
Such was his life, — but of his death
Were rumors blown by vulgar breath,
Clung to the mem’ry of the saint.
Some said to him it had been given
To be translated straight to heaven.
But some, that, when he saw at last
Death’s shadow o’er his threshold cast,
With feeble hands and fluttering heart
He scooped himself a grave apart,
And, from some sacred, secret hole,
Drew forth a crook and ‘broidered stole,
Robes of a long-forgotten day,
Yet stiff with gold and rich display;
When in this faded pomp arrayed
Within his grave himself he laid,
Open upon his breast his book,
His thin hands clasped above the crook,
Telling his prayers with latest breath,
Waiting with steadfast air for death.
That when, in deepest shades of night,
His struggling spirit winged its flight,
Unearthly hands in earthly toil
Filled in the grave with upturned soil.
Howe’er it was, the anchorite
Had long since passed from mortal sight,
Leaving the hut forgotten, lone,
To be with velvet moss o’ergrown,
Till, flying from the world of men,
Light-headed from his gnawing pain,
Sir Caverlaye of Voysvenel
There came, in solitude to dwell.
Here had he come, but not in guise
Of hermit meek, with downcast eyes,
But housed in proof and lance in hand,
And on his thigh his four-foot brand,
His war-horse sheathed in panoply,
A very type of errantry.
Within his breast the swelling pain
At length had touched his trembling brain,
His thoughts unguided and o’erwhelmed
Like barks storm-driven and unhelmed.
And so he’d fallen upon a way
Not rare with ancient chivalry.
Upon the bridge’s head all day,
Mounted and armed for instant fray,
He kept his post ‘till dewy night;
Vowed to engage each coming knight.
The woodman, with his fagots bare,
The cow-herd, with his lowing care,
The huntsman, laden with his game,
The soldier, singing as he came,
And the stout burgher bent on gain,
Surrounded with his well-armed train, —
All these he let pass by unrecked;
All these pursued their way unchecked.
But he beneath his vow was laid
On faith and holy relics made,
That soon as e’er his vizored eye
Atween the tree-boles should descry
An errant warrior’s armor bright,
Then straight he should prepare for fight,
Arouse his steed, level his lance,
And do him combat à l’outrance,
And bear him chivalrous and well,