e the soul disincarnate
Hunts on to hell-door?

--Ah! friendless in death!
Rude forest-hands fling
On the charcoaler's wain
What but now was the king!
And through the long Minster
The carcass they bear,
And huddle it down
Without priest, without prayer:--

Now with worms for his courtiers
He lies in the narrow
Cold couch of the chancel:
--But whence was the arrow?

_In his cups_; Rufus, it is said, was 'fey,' as the old phrase has it, on
the day of his death. He feasted long and high, and then chose out two
cross-bow shafts, presenting them to Tyrrell with the exclamation given
above.

_Serlo_; He was Abbot of Gloucester, and had sent to Rufus the narrative
of an ominous dream, reported in the Monastery.

_The true dreams_; On his last night Rufus 'laid himself down to sleep,
but not in peace; the attendants were startled by the King's voice--a
bitter cry--a cry for help--a cry for deliverance--he had been suddenly
awakened by a dreadful dream, as of exquisite anguish befalling him in
that ruined church, at the foot of the Malwood rampart.' Palgrave:
_Hist. of Normandy and of England_, B. IV: ch. xii.

_Young Richard_; Son to Robert Courthose, and hunting, as his uncle's
guest, in the New Forest in May 1100, was mysteriously slain by a heavy
bolt from a Norman Arbalest.

_The Evil-wood walls_; 'Amongst the sixty churches which had been
'ruined,' my Father remarks, in his notice of the New Forest, 'the
sanctuary below the mystic Malwood was peculiarly remarkable. . . . You
reach the Malwood easily from the Leafy Lodge in the favourite deer-walk,
the Lind-hurst, the Dragon's wood.'

_Through the long Minster_; Winchester. Rufus, with much hesitation, was
buried in the chancel as a king; but no religious service or ceremonial
was celebrated:--'All men thought that prayers were hopeless.'

EDITH OF ENGLAND

1100

Through sapling shades of summer green,
By glade and height and hollow,
Where Rufus rode the stag to bay,
King Henry spurs a jocund way,
Another chase to follow.
But when he came to Romsey gate
The doors are open'd free,
And through the gate like sunshine streams
A maiden company:--
One girdled with the vervain-red,
And three in sendal gray,
And touch the trembling rebeck-strings
To their soft roundelay;--

--The bravest knight may fail in fight;
The red rust edge the sword;
The king his crown in dust lay down;
But Love is always Lord!

King Henry