• “Though naught for the poor corpse lying here
• Remain to-day but the cold white bier,
• But burial-chaunt and bended knee,
• But sighs and tears that heaviest be,
• But rent rose-flower and rosemary.”

 

• We, cast forth from the Beryl,
• Gyre-circling spirits of fire,
• Whose pangs begin
• With God's grace to sin,
• For whose spent powers the immortal hours are
• sterile,—
• Woe! must We behold this mother
• Find grace in her dead child's face, and doubt of
• none other
• But that perfect pardon, alas! hath assured her
• guerdon?
• Woe! must We behold this daughter,
• 10 Made clean from the soil of sin wherewith We had
• fraught her,
page: 67  
• Shake off a man's blood like water?
• Write up her story
• On the Gate of Heaven's glory,
• Whom there We behold so fair in shining apparel,
• And beneath her the ruin
• Of our own undoing!
• Alas, the Beryl!
• We had for a foeman
• But one weak woman;
• 20 In one day's strife,
• Her hope fell dead from her life;
• And yet no iron,
• Her soul to environ,
• Could this manslayer, this false soothsayer imperil!
• Lo, where she bows
• In the Holy House!
• Who now shall dissever her soul from its joy for ever,
page: 68  
• While every ditty
• Of love and plentiful pity
• 30 Fills the White City,
• And the floor of Heaven to her feet for ever is
• given?
• Hark, a voice cries “Flee!”
• Woe! woe! what shelter have We,
• Whose pangs begin
• With God's grace to sin,
• For whose spent powers the immortal hours are
• sterile,
• Gyre-circling spirits of fire,
• We, cast forth from the Beryl?

         

• BY none but me can the tale be told,
• The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold.
• ( Lands are swayed by a King on a throne.)
• 'Twas a royal train put forth to sea,
• Yet the tale can be told by none but me.
• ( The sea hath no King but God alone.)

• King Henry held it as life's whole gain
• That after his death his son should reign.

• `Twas so in my youth I heard men say,
• 10And my old age calls it back to-day.

• King Henry of England's realm was he,
• And Henry Duke of Normandy.

• The times had changed when on either coast
• “Clerkly Harry” was all his boast.

• Of ruthless strokes full many an one
• He had struck to crown himself and his son;
• And his elder brother's eyes were gone.

• And when to the chase his court would crowd,
• The poor flung ploughshares on his road,
• 20And shrieked: “Our cry is from King to God!”

• But all the chiefs of the English land
• Had knelt and kissed the Prince's hand.

• And next with his son he sailed to France
• To claim the Norman allegiance:

• And every baron in Normandy
• Had taken the oath of fealty.

• 'Twas sworn and sealed, and the day had come
• When the King and the Prince might journey home:

• For Christmas cheer is to home hearts dear,
• 30And Christmas now was drawing near.

• Stout Fitz-Stephen came to the King,—
• A pilot famous in seafaring;

• And he held to the King, in all men's sight,
• A mark of gold for his tribute's right.

• “Liege Lord! my father guided the ship
• From whose boat your father's foot did slip
• When he caught the English soil in his grip,

• ”And cried: ‘By this clasp I claim command
• O'er every rood of English land!’

• 40“He was borne to the realm you rule o'er now
• In that ship with the archer carved at her prow:

• “And thither I'll bear, an' it be my due,
• Your father's son and his grandson too.

• “The famed White Ship is mine in the bay;
• From Harfleur's harbour she sails to-day,

• “With masts fair-pennoned as Norman spears
• And with fifty well-tried mariners.”

• Quoth the King: “My ships are chosen each one,
• But I'll not say nay to Stephen's son.

• 50“My son and daughter and fellowship
• Shall cross the water in the White Ship.”

• The King set sail with the eve's south wind,
• And soon he left that coast behind.

• The Prince and all his, a princely show,
• Remained in the good White Ship to go.

• With noble knights and with ladies fair,
• With courtiers and sailors gathered there,
• Three hundred living souls we were:

• And I Berold was the meanest hind
• 60In all that train to the Prince assign'd.

• The Prince was a lawless shameless youth;
• From his father's loins he sprang without ruth:

• Eighteen years till then he had seen,
• And the devil's dues in him were eighteen.

• And now he cried: “Bring wine from below;
• Let the sailors revel ere yet they row:

• “Our speed shall o'ertake my father's flight
• Though we sail from the harbour at midnight.”

• The rowers made good cheer without check;
• 70The lords and ladies obeyed his beck;
• The night was light, and they danced on the deck.

• But at midnight's stroke they cleared the bay,
• And the White Ship furrowed the water-way.

• The sails were set, and the oars kept tune
• To the double flight of the ship and the moon:

• Swifter and swifter the White Ship sped
• Till she flew as the spirit flies from the dead:

• As white as a lily glimmered she
• Like a ship's fair ghost upon the sea.

• 80And the Prince cried, “Friends, 'tis the hour to
• sing!
• Is a songbird's course so swift on the wing?”

• And under the winter stars' still throng,
• From brown throats, white throats, merry and
• strong,
• The knights and the ladies raised a song.

• A song,—nay, a shriek that rent the sky,
• That leaped o'er the deep!—the grievous cry
• Of three hundred living that now must die.

• An instant shriek that sprang to the shock
• As the ship's keel felt the sunken rock.

• 90'Tis said that afar—a shrill strange sigh—
• The King's ships heard it and knew not why.

• Pale Fitz-Stephen stood by the helm
• 'Mid all those folk that the waves must whelm.

• A great King's heir for the waves to whelm,
• And the helpless pilot pale at the helm!

• The ship was eager and sucked athirst,
• By the stealthy stab of the sharp reef pierc'd:

• And like the moil round a sinking cup,
• The waters against her crowded up.

• 100A moment the pilot's senses spin,—
• The next he snatched the Prince 'mid the din,
• Cut the boat loose, and the youth leaped in.

• A few friends leaped with him, standing near.
• “Row! the sea's smooth and the night is clear!”

• “What! none to be saved but these and I?”
• “Row, row as you'd live! All here must die!”

• Out of the churn of the choking ship,
• Which the gulf grapples and the waves strip,
• They struck with the strained oars' flash and dip.

• 110'Twas then o'er the splitting bulwarks' brim
• The Prince's sister screamed to him.