And, scorning him, I hated; yea, for that
His blood is on my sword!'
The priests of God
Had faced the monarch and denounced his crime:
They might as well have preached to ocean waves:
He felt no anger: he but deemed them mad,
And smiling went his way. Thus autumn passed:
The queen--he knew it--when alone wept on:
Near him the pale face smiled; the voice was sweet;
Loving the service; the obedience full:
Neither by words, by silence, nor by looks
She chid him. Like some penitent she walked
That mourns her own great sin.
Yet Oswy's heart,
Remorseless thus, had moods of passionate love:
A warrior of his host, Tosti by name,
Lay low, plague-stricken: kith and kin had fled:
Whole days the king sustained upon his knees
The sufferer's head, and cheered his heart with songs
Of Odin, strangely blent with Christian hymns,
While ofttimes stormy bursts of tears descended
Upon that face upturned. Ministering he sat
Till death the vigil closed.
One winter night
From distant chase belated he returned,
And passed by Oswin's grave. The snow, new-fallen,
Whitened the precinct. In the blast she knelt,
While coldly glared the broad and bitter moon
Upon those flying flakes that on her hair
Settled, or on her thin, light raiment clung.
She heard him not draw nigh. She only beat
Her breast, and, praying, wept: 'Our sin, our sin!'
There as the monarch stood a change came o'er him:
Old, exiled days in Alba as a dream
Redawned upon his spirit, and that look
In Aidan's eyes when, binding first that cross
Long by his pupil craved, around his neck,
He whispered: 'He who serveth Christ, his Lord,
Must love his fellow-man.' As when a stream,
The ice dissolved, grows audible once more,
So came to him those words. They dragged him down:
He knelt beside his wife, and beat his breast,
And said, 'My sin, my sin!' Till earliest morn
Glimmered through sleet that twain wept on, prayed on:--
Was it the rising sun that lit at last
The fair face upward lifted;--kindled there
A lovelier dawn than o'er it blushed when first
Dropped on her bridegroom's breast? Aloud she cried:
'Our prayer is heard: our penitence finds grace:'
Then added: 'Let it deepen till we die!
A