"This shalt thou do without delay; No longer here myself may stay: Unless the swifter I speed away, Short shrift will be at my dying day."— VIII. Away in speed Lord Cranstoun rode; His Lord's command he ne'er withstood, The Dwarf espied the Mighty Book! Like a book-bosom'd priest should ride : He thought not to search or staunch the wound, Until the secret he had found. IX. The iron band, the iron clasp, For when the first he had undone, It closed as he the next begun. Those iron clasps, that iron band, Would not yield to unchristen'd hand, A nut-shell seem a gilded barge, A sheeling† seem a palace large, And youth seem age, and age seem youth All was delusion, nought was truth. X. He had not read another spell, When on his cheek a buffet fell, So fierce, it stretch'd him on the plain, From the ground he rose dismay'd, The clasps, though smear'd with Christian gore, Shut faster than they were before. He hid it underneath his cloak.- It was not given by man alive. XI. Unwillingly himself he address'd, To do his master's high behest: He lifted up the living corse, And laid it on the weary horse; He led him into Branksome hall, Before the beards of the warders all; There only passed a wain of hay. He had laid him on her very bed. Was always done maliciously; He flung the warrior on the ground, And the blood welled freshly from the wound. XII.* As he repassed the outer court, He spied the fair young child at sport: He thought to train him to the wood; For, at a word, be it understood, He was always for ill, and never for good. • Magic. Seemed to the boy, some comrade gay XIII. He led the boy o'er bank and fell, He had crippled the joints of the noble child; Had strangled him in fiendish spleen, But his awful mother he had in dread, So he but scowled on the startled child, And darted through the forest wild; The woodland brook he bounding crossed, And laughed, and shouted, "Lost! lost! lost!" |