No More Learning

Oh, he sprang up in the selle and he laughed out bitter-well--
_Toll slowly. _
"Wouldst thou ride among the leaves, as we used on other eves,
To hear chime a vesper-bell? "

LXXX.

She clung closer to his knee--"Ay, beneath the cypress-tree! "
_Toll slowly. _
"Mock me not, for otherwhere than along the greenwood fair
Have I ridden fast with thee.

LXXXI.

"Fast I rode with new-made vows from my angry kinsman's house":
_Toll slowly. _
"What, and would you men should reck that I dared more for love's sake
As a bride than as a spouse?

LXXXII.

"What, and would you it should fall, as a proverb, before all"--
_Toll slowly. _
"That a bride may keep your side while through castle-gate you ride,
Yet eschew the castle-wall? "

LXXXIII.

Ho! the breach yawns into ruin and roars up against her suing--
_Toll slowly.
_
With the inarticulate din and the dreadful falling in--
Shrieks of doing and undoing!

LXXXIV.

Twice he wrung her hands in twain, but the small hands closed again.
_Toll slowly. _
Back he reined the steed--back, back! but she trailed along his track
With a frantic clasp and strain.

LXXXV.

Evermore the foemen pour through the crash of window and door--
_Toll slowly. _
And the shouts of Leigh and Leigh, and the shrieks of "kill! " and
"flee! "
Strike up clear amid the roar.

LXXXVI.

Thrice he wrung her hands in twain, but they closed and clung again--
_Toll slowly. _
While she clung, as one, withstood, clasps a Christ upon the rood,
In a spasm of deathly pain.

LXXXVII.

She clung wild and she clung mute with her shuddering lips half-shut.