I
In his tent, at fall of day,
Hero Harold loosed his mail,
As a bark which nears the bay
Drops on deck her clattering sail.
Eyes that look the looker through,
Brow that shame hath never bowed,
Lips that ne’er spake word untrue-
Where’s a face so fair and proud?”
Came a stripling to the tent,
Watched him while an hour went round,
Saw his stately discontent,
Dared not greet him while he frowned.
Up the warrior looked at last,
“Friend” (his smile was something grim),
“Cheap thine hours, if one is past
Staring at my strength of limb!”
“Cheap my life,” the stripling cried,
“If it buy an hour for thee!
Harold! Death is at thy side-“
“There,” quoth Harold, “let him be.
“Death and I are friends of old.”
Then he spake in softer wise:
“Come thou near till all is told;
Shake the woman from thine eyes.
“Nothing in my life was made,
Since its fighting-days began,
Meet for laughter from a maid,
Or for weeping from a man.
“Warriors’ tears are seeds of blood,
Girls go crying at a word,
Boys, if born for any good,
Cry for nothing but a sword!”
Sternly Siva set his face,
Smitten hard by friendly scorn,
And the babe in him gave place
To the savage lately born.
All the tender lines contract
When that fiery touch runs through;
As a Fancy to a Fact
Seems the old face to the new.
Change that melted as it came,
Swiftly as a hue of day.
But the face was not the same
When that moment passed away.
By such moments, hundred-fold,
Shaping life from now to then,
In those iron days of old
Babes were welded into men.
When the finished man appeared,
Strong and brave, and fierce and wild,
You might mutter to your beard,
“This has never been a child!”
Siva grasps the hero’s hand:
“Hardly can I speak for shame,
For a lie is in the land,
And it creeps about thy name.
“When the silver daylight grew
Out of yonder gloomy hill,
Thorwold, found among the dew,
Lay, before his mother, still.
“Waked not when she kissed his lip,
Stirred not when they moved his sword;
Dumb as a forsaken ship,
Useless as a bowl outpoured!”
Harold shook his spear and laughed,
“Thorwold died; the word is true;
Still the point is on the shaft,
Who will try its force anew?
“On the broad noon-lighted plain
Fought we while the day went past,
Fought I till my foe was slain-
He is not the first nor last.
“Bid his mother cease to grieve,
She has still two sons of might;
Let them, ere another eve,
Strive to slay me in her sight!”
Siva spoke with burning cheek:
“There, where Thorwold lieth stark,
Not of sunny war they speak,
But of murder in the dark!”
“Who are these that say such things?”
This was all that Harold said,
But his face was as a king’s
When he lifted up his head.
Out he thundered, scorning odds,
Stalked into the judgment-hall,
And his face was as a god’s
When he stood before them all.
There, while warriors held their breath,
Uncomposed by patient hand
Thorwold lay, a heap of death,
Heavy on the hollowed sand.
Up, with tossing arms untwined,
Rose the mother of the Grave
(So when sinks a desperate wind
Rises one reluctant wave).
Silence waits about the place,
Hero Harold backward draws
When that white and withered face
Flashes on him in the pause.
Then the general wrath brake out
In a vast and bitter cry,
Then they judged him with a shout,
Bade him choose his death and die:
Through the forest’s pathless dark
All a summer’s day to flee,
Or to drift in oarless bark
At the pity of the sea.
So Husc
(Menella Bute Smedley)
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