iane face of lovable white
Beneath;--like a star that a cloud of night
Stops over to threaten but never will drench
Its tremulous beauty with mists that quench.--

Heigho!--but they ceased, those meetings. I wot
Watched of the baron, his menial crew;
For she loved too well to have once forgot
The place and the time of their trysting true.
But she came not--ah! and again came not:
"_Why and when?_" would question Sir Hugh
In his labored scrawls a crevice of rock--
The lovers' post--in its coigne would lock.
Until near Yule Love gat them again
A twilight tryst--by frowardness sure.--
They met. And that day was gray with rain--
Or snow, and the wind did ever endure
A long, bleak moaning thorough the wood,
Smarted the cheek and chapped i' the blood;
And a burne in the forest cried "sob and sob,"
And whimpered forever a chopping throb
Thro' the rope-taunt boughs like a thing pursued.
--And there it was that he learned how she
(My faith! how it makes me burn and quiver
To think what a miserable despot he--
Lord Richard Strongbow, aye and ever
To his daughter was!) forsooth! must wed
With an Eastern Earl--some Lovell: one whom
(That God in His mercy had smote him dead!)
Hortense of Clare--but in baby bloom--
Never had mirrored with maiden eyes.
Sealed over a baby to strengthen some ties--
Of power or wealth--had been bartered then
And sold and purchased, and now ... but when
To her lover, the Clifford, she told this--there
He had faced with his love the talons of Death--
Only for her, who did stay with a stare
Of reproach all his heat and say in a breath,
"Is love, that thou sware to me aye and so often,
To live too feeble or--how?--doth it soften
And weaken away and--to die?--why die?--
Live and be strong! and this is why."--
Her words are glued here so!... I remember
All as well as that sullen December,
That blustered and bullied about them and
Spat stiff its spiteful and cold-cutting snow
Where they talked there dreamily hand in hand,
While the rubbing boughs clashed rattling low.
Her last words these, "By curfew sure
On Christmas eve at the postern door."

And we were there, and a void horse too:
Armed: for a journey I hardly knew
Whither, but why you well can guess.
I could have uttered a certain name--
Our comrade's sure--of what loveliness!
Waited with love, impatience aflame.
While Raglan bu