Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/322

 formerly in the bygone ballad of his life. Let us no more say that they rode through Wentwood, or looked on Severn Sea and the waving cornfields of Gwent; but rather wandering they went among the mazes of a Forest of Phansy; rested beneath trees of might unimaginable; and saw below them golden clouds, shining water, and glittering vanes, high turrets, and pinnacles now lifted merely above a silver misty sea, and now rising from tower and gateway and stony wall. And oh! the pomps and glorious shows they beheld (when their hands were clasped) in the courts of the castle; for thither all ancient noble lovers did resort as the old poet tells us. For he says—

They that have truly kept the ordinance

The King has made, which is our Lord Royall,

With perfect love and leal observance;

When that the doom of death do on them fall

Then do they win their bliss and maintenance

And joyous pleasure in a wondrous hall.

It is so fair, I guess it passeth thought.

And by no rhyming may at all be sought.

Hither then did Bertha and Symon look from the greeny lattices that the hazel and the rose and honeysuckle twisted; since they had vowed, either to other, a perfect and enduring love, and so had fellowship with the true lovers of the old time, who for their King's sake had endured pain and sorrow, shame, death and dishonour rather