Page:Early poems of William Morris.djvu/243

 The wet reins: yea, and scarcely, too,

She felt the foot within her shoe

Against the stirrup: all for this,

To part at last without a kiss

Beside the haystack in the floods.

For when they near'd that old soak'd hay,

They saw across the only way

That Judas, Godmar, and the three

Red running lions dismally

Grinn'd from his pennon, under which,

In one straight line along the ditch,

They counted thirty heads.

While Robert turn'd round to his men,

She saw at once the wretched end,

And, stooping down, tried hard to rend

Her coif the wrong way from her head,

And hid her eyes; while Robert said:

"Nay, love, 'tis scarcely two to one,

At Poictiers where we made them run

So fast—why, sweet my love, good cheer,

The Gascon frontier is so near,

Nought after this."

"My God! my God! I have to tread

The long way back without you; then

The court at Paris; those six men;

The gratings of the Chatelet;

The swift Seine on some rainy day

Like this, and people standing by,

And laughing, while my weak hands try