THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. Walter Scott

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">       And the door might not be opened,

       He had laid him on her very bed.

       Whate’er he did of gramarye

       Was always done maliciously;

       He flung the warrior on the ground,

       And the blood well’d freshly from the wound.

       XII

      As he repass’d the outer court,

       He spied the fair young child at sport:

       He thought to train him to the wood;

       For, at a word be it understood,

       He was always for ill, and never for good.

       Seem’d to the boy, some comrade gay

       Led him forth to the woods to play;

       On the drawbridge the warders stout

       Saw a terrier and lurcher passing out.

       XIII

      He led the boy o’er bank and fell,

       Until they came to a woodland brook

       The running stream dissolv’d the spell,

       And his own elvish shape he took.

       Could he have had his pleasure vilde

       He had crippled the joints of the noble child;

       Or, with his fingers long and lean,

       Had strangled him in fiendish spleen:

       But his awful mother he had in dread,

       And also his power was limited;

       So he but scowl’d on the startled child,

       And darted through the forest wild;

       The woodland brook he bounding cross’d,

       And laugh’d, and shouted, “Lost! lost! lost!”

       XIV

      Full sore amaz’d at the wondrous change,

       And frighten’d, as a child might be,

       At the wild yell and visage strange,

       And the dark words of gramarye,

       The child, amidst the forest bower,

       Stood rooted like a lily flower;

       And when at length, with trembling pace,

       He sought to find where Branksome lay,

       He fear’d to see that grisly face

       Glare from some thicket on his way.

       Thus, starting oft, he journey’d on,

       And deeper in the wood is gone,

       For aye the more he sought his way,

       The farther still he went astray,

       Until he heard the mountains round

       Ring to the baying of a hound.

       XV

      And hark! and hark! the deep-mouth’d bark

       Comes nigher still, and nigher:

       Bursts on the path a dark bloodhound;

       His tawny muzzle track’d the ground,

       And his red eye shot fire.

       Soon as the wilder’d child saw he,

       He flew at him right furiouslie.

       I ween you would have seen with joy

       The bearing of the gallant boy,

       When, worthy of his noble sire,

       His wet cheek glow’d ‘twixt fear and ire!

       He faced the bloodhound manfully,

       And held his little bat on high;

       So fierce he struck, the dog, afraid,

       At cautious distance hoarsely bay’d

       But still in act to spring;

       When dash’d an archer through the glade,

       And when he saw the hound was stay’d,

       He drew his tough bowstring;

       But a rough voice cried, “Shoot not, hoy!

       Ho! shoot not, Edward; ‘tis a boy!”

       XVI

      The speaker issued from the wood,

       And check’d his fellow’s surly mood,

       And quell’d the ban-dog’s ire:

       He was an English yeoman good,

       And born in Lancashire.

       Well could he hit a fallow-deer

       Five hundred feet him fro;

       With hand more true, and eye more clear,

       No archer bended bow.

       His coal-black hair, shorn round and close,

       Set off his sunburn’d face:

       Old England’s sign, St. George’s cross,

       His barret-cap did grace;

       His bugle-horn hung by his side,

       All in a wolf-skin baldric tied;

       And his short falchion, sharp and clear,

       Had pierc’d the throat of many a deer.

       XVII

      His kirtle, made of forest green,

       Reach’d scantly to his knee;

       And, at his belt, of arrows keen

       A furbish’d sheaf bore he;

       His buckler, scarce in breadth a span,

       No larger fence had he;

       He never counted him a man,

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