he sang as he turned his back upon its bounds,
occasionally reverting his head:

Ye woods, that oft at sultry noon
Have o'er me spread your messy shade:
Ye gushing streams, whose murmured tune
Has in my ear sweet music made,
While, where the dancing pebbles show
Deep in the restless fountain-pool
The gelid water's upward flow,
My second flask was laid to cool:

Ye pleasant sights of leaf and flower:
Ye pleasant sounds of bird and bee:
Ye sports of deer in sylvan bower:
Ye feasts beneath the greenwood tree:
Ye baskings in the vernal sun:
Ye slumbers in the summer dell:
Ye trophies that this arm has won:
And must ye hear your friar's farewell?

But the friar's farewell was not destined to be eternal. He was
domiciled as the family confessor of the earl and countess of
Huntingdon, who led a discreet and courtly life, and kept up old
hospitality in all its munificence, till the death of King Richard and
the usurpation of John, by placing their enemy in power, compelled them
to return to their greenwood sovereignty; which, it is probable, they
would have before done from choice, if their love of sylvan liberty
had not been counteracted by their desire to retain the friendship
of Coeur-de-Lion. Their old and tried adherents, the friar among the
foremost, flocked again round their forest-banner; and in merry Sherwood
they long lived together, the lady still retaining her former name of
Maid Marian, though the appellation was then as much a misnomer as that
of Little John.

THE END.

Footnotes:

[Footnote 1: Roasting by a slow fire for the love of God.]

[Footnote 2: Of these lines all that is not in italics belongs to Mr.
Wordsworth: Resolution and Independence.]

[Footnote 3: Harp-it-on: or, a corruption of (greek 'Erpeton), a
creeping thing.]

[Footnote 4:

And therefore is she called Maid Marian
Because she leads a spotless maiden life
And shall till Robin's outlaw life have end.
--Old Play.]

[Footnote 5:

"These byshoppes and these archbyshoppes
Ye shall them bete and bynde,"

says Robin Hood, in an old ballad. Perhaps, however, thus is to be taken
not in a literal, but in a figurative sense from the binding and beating
of wheat: for as all rich men were Robin's harvest, the bishops and
archbishops must have been the finest and fattest ears among them, from
which Robin merely p