_Home_
is here an adverb strengthening the meaning of _charge_.

[64] Juno. Wife of Jupiter, and queen of heaven.

[65] Algidus. A hill about twelve miles from Rome.

ALICE BRAND.

Merry it is in the good greenwood,
When the mavis and merle[1] are singing,
When the deer sweeps by and the hounds are in cry,
And the hunter's horn is ringing.

"O Alice Brand, my native land 5
Is lost for love of you;
And we must hold by wood and wold,[2]
As outlaws wont to do.

"O Alice, 'twas all for thy locks so bright,
And 'twas all for thine eyes so blue, 10
That on the night of our luckless flight
Thy brother bold I slew.

"Now must I teach to hew the beech
The hand that held the glaive,[3]
For leaves to spread our lowly bed, 15
And stakes to fence our cave.

"And for vest of pall,[4] thy fingers small,
That wont on harp to stray,
A cloak must shear from the slaughtered deer,
To keep the cold away." 20

"O Richard! if my brother died,
Twas but a fatal chance;
For darkling[5] was the battle tried,
And fortune sped the lance.

"If pall and vair[6] no more I wear, 25
Nor thou the crimson sheen,
As warm, we 'll say, is the russet gray,
As gay the forest-green.

"And, Richard, if our lot be hard,
And lost thy native land, 30
Still Alice has her own Richard,
And he his Alice Brand."

'T is merry, 't is merry, in good greenwood
So blithe Lady Alice is singing;
On the beech's pride, and oak's brown side, 35
Lord Richard's axe is ringing.

Up spoke the moody Elfin King,[7]
Who woned[8] within the hill,--
Like wind in the porch of a ruined church,
His voice was ghostly shrill. 40

"Why sounds yon stroke on beech and oak,
Our moonlight circle's[9] screen?
Or who comes here to chase the deer,
Beloved of our Elfin Queen?
Or who may dare on wold to wear 45
The fairies' fatal green?[10]

"Up, Urgan, up! to yon mortal hie,
For thou wert christened[11] man;
For cross or sign thou wilt not fly,
For muttered word or ban.[12] 50

"Lay on him the curse of the withered heart,
The curse of the sleepless eye
Till he wish and pray that his life would part,
Nor yet find leave to die."

Tis merry, 'tis merry, in