DURR FRIEDLEY ex-’10

There was shouting and hand-clapping from all the gay company, and a shower of gay words for me when I had done with my singing; and my lord, greatly pleased, and prophesying that some day when I should be riper in years I might win the crown of peacock’s feathers from the hands of the Princess Eleanor herself, bade me come on the morrow dawn to sing an alba under the casement of the bridal chamber.  The bride, too, this new wife that had taken my own lady’s place by my lord’s side, she, come but yesterday from her thick-witted Bohemia, and whom, never loving, I might always truly pity, spoke me fair and besought me to make verses thenceforth in praise of none save her.  I answered as best I might, but I fear me my speech came but falteringly, what with my heart beating against my ribs like the armor-smith’s hammer, and the thought uppermost in my mind of the dark business yet to come that night, before the shame and wrong of it all might be righted—­a black business that none but I in all that company wotted of.

So presently, when all the people made a noisy procession to see the bridegroom and the bride to their high chamber, I did not go among them, but stole apart in the shadow and tarried there until the serving-folk had ceased their scurrying about and the house had grown quiet in its besotted sleep.  Then I crept back to a dark corner by the great hearth where the stone was warm to the touch and whence I might see if any passed along the hall.  I was all alone there with the drained goblets, the withering garlands, and the gutted torches, not a soul abroad, and not a sound save the breathing of the dormant stag-hounds by the hearth, or the faint disputes of the rats over the pasty fragments on the table.

Sitting thus, I would go hot of a flash and then cold just as sudden.  Fear?  No, by Our Lady, but this was the first time I had ever had a finger in such a pie as this now baking, and the strangeness of it made me tremble.  But fear, pah!  Besides I was in the right, and does that not make the just hand steady and the pious eye true?  I took up my lute and touching the strings so gently that I myself could scarce hear, I sang, soft as summer wind at even, so softly that none, not even the great hounds heard.

Sang I: 

  The vision tender
    Which thy love giveth me,
  Still bids me render
    My vows in song to thee;
  Gracious and slender,
    Thine image I can see,
  Wherever I wend, or
    What eyes do look on me.

  Yea, in the frowning face
  Of uttermost disgrace
  Proud would I take my place
    Before thy feet,
    Lady whose aspect sweet
  Doth my poor soul efface
  Leaving but joy and grace
    In me to meet.

  Who shall deny me
    The memory of thine eyes? 
  Evermore by me
    Thy lithe white form doth rise,
  If God were nigh me
    Still, in so sure a wise
  Quick might I hie me
    Into His paradise.