1st Knight. 10 The enemy 2d Knight. Sure of a bloody prey, seeing the fens Will swamp them girth-deep. We are well breathed, follow! Enter Earl BALDWIN and Soldiers, as defeated. Stephen. - De Redvers ! What is the monstrous bugbear that can fright Baldwin? 20 Baldwin. No scare-crow, but the fortu nate star Of boisterous Chester, whose fell truncheon now Points level to the goal of victory. tain Your person unaffronted by vile odds, Stephen. And which way spur for life? Now I thank Heaven I am in the toils, Bears his flaunt standard close upon their That soldiers may bear witness how my For I will never by mean hands be led From this so famous field. Do you hear! Be quick! Eats wholesome, sweet, and palatable food Off Glocester's golden dishes drinks pure wine, Trumpets. Enter the Earl of CHESTER and Lodges soft? A meek attentive ear, so that they treat Of the wide kingdom's rule and government, Not trenching on our actions personal. Advised, not school'd, I would be; and henceforth Spoken to in clear, plain, and open terms, Not side-ways sermon'd at. Glocester. Then in plain terms, Once more for the fallen kingMaud. Your pardon, Brother, I would no more of that; for, as I said, 'Tis not for worldly pomp I wish to see The rebel, but as dooming judge to give 20 A sentence something worthy of his guilt. Glocester. If 't must be so, I'll bring him to your presence. [Exit GLOCESTER. Maud. A meaner summoner might do as well My Lord of Chester, is 't true what I hear Of Stephen of Boulogne, our prisoner, THE EVE OF ST. MARK A FRAGMENT In a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, dated February 14, 1819, Keats says that he means to send them in the next packet 'The Pot of Basil,' 'St. Agnes' Eve,' and 'if I should have finished it a little thing called "The Eve of St. Mark." He does not refer to the poem again directly, until writing from Winchester to the same, September 20, when he says: The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting. The palatine Vienna and the abbotine Winchester are equally interesting. Some time since I began a poem called "The Eve of St. Mark," quite in the spirit of town quietude. I think I will give you the sensation of walking about an old country town in a coolish evening. I know not whether I shall ever finish it. I will give it as far as I have gone.' The poem appears never to have been finished, and was published in this fragmentary form in Life, Letters and Literary Remains. Mr. Forman gives an interesting extract from UPON a Sabbath-day it fell; 10 a letter written him by Mr. Rossetti, which throws a possible light on the origin of the poem. He had been reading Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne, and writes: 'I should think it very conceivable - nay, I will say to myself highly probable and almost certain, that the "Poem which I have in my head" referred to by Keats at page 106 was none other than the fragmentary" Eve of St. Mark." By the light of the extract, . . . I judge that the heroine remorseful after trifling with a sick and now absent lover-might make her way to the minster-porch to learn his fate by the spell, and perhaps see his figure enter but not return.' The extract from Keats's letter is as follows: If my health would bear it, I could write a Poem which I have in my head, which would be a consolation for people in such a situation as mine. I would show some one in Love as I am, with a person living in such Liberty as you do.' |