Page:Verses–Blanche·Baughan-1898.pdf/132



THE good Lord, Leon of Northumberland, King Ector’s son, had trouble in his youth, For, first, there was a malison on his birth, So that his thigh was shrunken; next, his sire, A great lord, and a mighty man of war, Hated him, being angry at his hurt: And then, his mother, whose whole life had been One prayer for him, with a sad, heavy heart Died in his greenhead youth, When she was dead, Leon, taught curtly how that, being maim’d, Joustings and tourneys and the joy of war Were not for him, and making curt reply He was not for the cloister, found it best To call the forest home; and there dwelt long, Father’d and mother’d but by loneliness,