ul and sad, the o'er-gentle monarch mused:
'To feast with sinners is to sanction sin,
A deed abhorred; the alternative is hard:
Must then their sovereign shame with open scorn
Kinsman and friend? I think they mourn the past,
And, were our Bishop here, would pardon sue.'
Boding, yet self-deceived, he joined that feast:
Thereat he saw scant sign of penitence:
Ere long he bade farewell.
That self-same hour
Cedd from his northern pilgrimage returned;
The monarch met him at the offenders' gate,
And, instant when he saw that reverend face,
His sin before him stood. Down from his horse
Leaping, he told him all, and penance prayed.
Long time the old man on that royal front
Fixed a sad eye. 'Thy sin was great, my son,
Shaming thy God to spare a sinner's shame:
That sin thy God forgives, and I remit:
But those whom God forgives He chastens oft:
My son, I see a sign upon thy brow!
Ere yonder lessening moon completes her wane
Behold, the blood-stained hand late clasped in thine
Shall drag thee to thy death.' The King replied:
'A Sigebert there lived, East Anglia's King,
Whose death was glorious to his realm. May mine,
Dark and inglorious, strengthen hearts infirm,
And profit thus my land.'
A time it was
When Christian mercy, judged by Pagan hearts,
Not virtue seemed but sin. That sin's reproach
The King had long sustained. Ere long it chanced
That, near the stronghold of that impious feast,
A vanquished rebel, long in forests hid,
Drew near, and knelt to Sigebert for grace,
And won his suit. The monarch's kinsmen twain,
Those men of blood, forth-gazing from a tower,
Saw all; heard all. Upon them fury fell,
As when through cloudless skies there comes a blast
From site unknown, that, instant, finds its prey,
Circling some white-sailed bark, or towering tree,
And, with a touch, down-wrenching; all things else
Unharmed, though near. They snatched their daggers up,
And rushed upon their prey, and, shouting thus,
'White-livered slave, that mak'st thy throne a jest,
And mock'st great Odin's self, and us, thy kin,
To please thy shaveling,' struck him through the heart;
Then, spurring through the woodlands to the sea,
Were never heard of more.
Throughout the lan