• And now the ladies fled with the Queen;
• And thorough the open door
• The night-wind wailed round the empty room
• And the rushes shook on the floor.

• And the bed drooped low in the dark recess
• Whence the arras was rent away;
• And the firelight still shone over the space
• Where our hidden secret lay.

• And the rain had ceased, and the moonbeams lit
• 630The window high in the wall,—
• Bright beams that on the plank that I knew
• Through the painted pane did fall
• And gleamed with the splendour of Scotland's crown
• And shield armorial.

• But then a great wind swept up the skies,
• And the climbing moon fell back;
• And the royal blazon fled from the floor,
• And nought remained on its track;
• And high in the darkened window-pane
• 640The shield and the crown were black.

• And what I say next I partly saw
• And partly I heard in sooth,
• And partly since from the murderers' lips
• The torture wrung the truth.

• For now again came the armèd tread,
• And fast through the hall it fell;
• But the throng was less; and ere I saw,
• By the voice without I could tell
• That Robert Stuart had come with them
• 650Who knew that chamber well.

• 810Last she stood up to her queenly height,
• But she shook like an autumn leaf,
• As though the fire wherein she burned
• Then left her body, and all were turned
• To winter of life-long grief.

• And “O James!” she said,—“My James!” she
• said,—
• “Alas for the woful thing,
• That a poet true and a friend of man,
• In desperate days of bale and ban,
• Should needs be born a King!”