Читать книгу A Roadside Harp: A Book of Verses - Louise Imogen Guiney - Страница 4

Table of Contents

“In Clent cow-batch, Kenelm King born Lieth under a thorn.”

IT was a goodly child,

Sweet as the gusty May;

It was a knight that broke

On his play,

A fair and coaxing knight:

“O little liege!” said he,

“Thy sister bids thee come

After me.

“A pasture rolling west

Lies open to the sun,

Bright-shod with primroses

Doth it run;

And forty oaks be nigh,

Apart, and face to face,

And cow-bells all the morn

In the space.

“And there the sloethorn bush

Beside the water grows,

And hides her mocking head

Under snows;

Black stalks afoam with bloom,

And never a leaf hath she:

Thou crystal of the realm,

Follow me!”

Uplooked the undefiled:

“All things, ere I was born

My sister found; now find

Me the thorn.”

They travelled down the lane,

An hour’s dust they made:

The belted breast of one

Bore a blade.

The primroses were out,

The aislèd oaks were green,

The cow-bells pleasantly

Tinked between;

The brook was beaded gold,

The thorn was burgeoning,

Where evil Ascobert

Slew the King.

He hid him in the ground,

Nor washed away the dyes,

Nor smoothed the fallen curls

From his eyes.

No father had the babe

To bless his bed forlorn;

No mother now to weep

By the thorn.

There fell upon that place

A shaft of heavenly light;

The thorn in Mercia spake

Ere the night:

“Beyond, a sister sees

Her crownèd period,

But at my root a lamb

Seeth God.”

Unto each, even so.

As dew before the cloud,

The guilty glory passed

Of the proud.

Boy Kenelm has the song,

Saint Kenelm has the bower;

His thorn a thousand years

Is in flower!