Where thou wendest, wend unfearing; Every step thy throne is nearing. Never shall thy House decay, Nor thy sceptre pass away, While the Saxon name endureth In the land thy throne secureth; Saxon name and throne together, Leaf and root, shall wax and wither; So the measure shall be meted, And the circle close completed.
Art thou answer'd, dauntless seeker? Go, thy bark shall ride the breaker, Every billow high and higher, Waft thee up to thy desire; And a force beyond thine own, Drift and strand thee on the throne.
When the Wolf Month, grim and still, Piles the snow-mass on the hill, In the white air sharp and bitter Shall thy kingly sceptre glitter: When the ice-gems barb the bough Shall the jewels clasp thy brow; Winter-wind, the oak uprending, With the altar-anthem blending; Wind shall howl, and mone shall sing, 'Hail to Harold--HAIL THE KING!'"
An exultation that seemed more than human, so intense it was and so solemn,--thrilled in the voice which thus closed predictions that seemed signally to belie the more vague and menacing warnings with which the dreary incantation had commenced. The Morthwyrtha stood erect and stately, still gazing on the pale blue flame that rose from the burial stone, still slowly the flame waned and paled, and at last died with a sudden flicker, leaving the grey tomb standing forth all weatherworn and desolate, while a wind rose from the north and sighed through the roofless columns. Then as the light over the grave expired, Hilda gave a deep sigh, and fell to the ground senseless.
Harold lifted his eyes towards the stars and murmured:
"If it be a sin, as the priests say, to pierce the dark walls which surround us here, and read the future in the dim world beyond, why gavest thou, O Heaven, the reason, ever resting, save when it explores? Why hast thou set in the heart the mystic Law of Desire, ever toiling to the High, ever grasping at the Far?"
Heaven answered not the unquiet soul. The clouds passed to and fro in their wanderings, the wind still sighed through the hollow stones, the fire shot with vain sparks towards the distant stars. In the cloud and the wind and the fire couldst thou read no answer from Heaven, unquiet soul?
The next day, with a gallant company, the falcon on his wrist [186], the sprightly hound gamboling before his steed, blithe of heart and high in hope, Earl Harold took his way to the Norman court.
BOOK IX.
THE BONES OF THE DEAD.
CHAPTER I.
William, Count of the Normans, sate in a fair chamber of his palace of Rouen; and on the large table before him were ample evidences of the various labours, as warrior, chief, thinker, and statesman, which filled the capacious breadth of that sleepless mind.
There lay a plan of the new port of Cherbourg, and beside it an open MS. of the Duke's favourite book, the Commentaries of Caesar, from which, it is said, he borrowed some of the tactics of his own martial science; marked, and dotted, and interlined with his large bold handwriting, were the words of the great Roman. A score or so of long arrows, which had received some skilful improvement in feather or bolt, lay carelessly scattered over some architectural sketches of a new Abbey Church, and the proposed charter for its endowment. An open cyst, of the beautiful workmanship for which the English goldsmiths were then pre-eminently renowned, that had been among the parting gifts of Edward, contained letters from the various potentates near and far, who sought his alliance or menaced his repose.
On a perch behind him sate his favourite Norway falcon unhooded, for it had been taught the finest polish in its dainty education--viz., "to face company undisturbed." At a kind of easel at the farther end of the hall, a dwarf, misshapen in limbs, but of a face singularly acute and intelligent, was employed in the outline of that famous action at Val des Dunes, which had been the scene of one of the most brilliant of William's feats in arms--an outline intended to be transferred to the notable "stitchwork" of Matilda the Duchess.
Upon the floor, playing with a huge boar-hound of English breed, that seemed but ill to like the play, and every now and then snarled and showed his white teeth, was a young boy, with something of the Duke's features, but with an expression more open and less sagacious; and something of the Duke's broad build of chest and shoulder, but without promise of the Duke's stately stature, which was needed to give grace and dignity to a strength otherwise cumbrous and graceless. And indeed, since William's visit to England, his athletic shape had lost much of its youthful symmetry, though not yet deformed by that corpulence which was a disease almost as rare in the Norman as the Spartan.
Nevertheless, what is a defect in the gladiator is often but a beauty in the prince; and the Duke's large proportions filled the eye with a sense both of regal majesty and physical power.