“See, see!” she cried in piercing accents;
and, clasping the dead in her arms, she kissed the
lips, and called aloud, in words of the tenderest
endearments, as if she addressed the living.
All there knew then that the search was ended; all
knew that the eyes of love had recognised the dead.
“Wed, wed,” murmured the betrothed; “wed
at last! O Harold, Harold! the words of the
Vala were true—and Heaven is kind!”
and laying her head gently on the breast of the dead,
she smiled and died.
At the east end of the choir in the Abbey of Waltham,
was long shown the tomb of the Last Saxon King, inscribed
with the touching words— “Harold
Infelix.” But not under that stone, according
to the chronicler who should best know the truth [277],
mouldered the dust of him in whose grave was buried
an epoch in human annals.
“Let his corpse,” said William the Norman,
“let his corpse guard the coasts, which his
life madly defended. Let the seas wail his dirge,
and girdle his grave; and his spirit protect the land
which hath passed to the Norman’s sway.”
And Mallet de Graville assented to the word of his
chief, for his knightly heart turned into honour the
latent taunt; and well he knew, that Harold could
have chosen no burial spot so worthy his English spirit
and his Roman end.
The tomb at Waltham would have excluded the faithful
ashes of the betrothed, whose heart had broken on
the bosom she had found; more gentle was the grave
in the temple of heaven, and hallowed by the bridal
death-dirge of the everlasting sea.
So, in that sentiment of poetry and love, which made
half the religion of a Norman knight, Mallet de Graville
suffered death to unite those whom life had divided.
In the holy burial-ground that encircled a small
Saxon chapel, on the shore, and near the spot on which
William had leapt to land, one grave received the
betrothed; and the tomb of Waltham only honoured an
empty name. [278]
Eight centuries have rolled away, and where is the
Norman now? or where is not the Saxon? The little
urn that sufficed for the mighty lord [279] is despoiled
of his very dust; but the tombless shade of the kingly
freeman still guards the coasts, and rests upon the
seas. In many a noiseless field, with Thoughts
for Armies, your relics, O Saxon Heroes, have won
back the victory from the bones of the Norman saints;
and whenever, with fairer fates, Freedom opposes Force,
and Justice, redeeming the old defeat, smites down
the armed Frauds that would consecrate the wrong,—smile,
O soul of our Saxon Harold, smile, appeased, on the
Saxon’s land!
NOTE (A)
