Poems (Forrest)/The reiver
THE REIVER
Oh, clear the road runs down the hill, and out across the heath,And at the three cross-roads there stands a gibbet stark as death:The wind goes whistling round the bones of that which hangs beneath.
And on a merry Summer's morn my lady's coach rolls by,The gay postillion cracks his whip; my lady's sombre eyeLooks straight ahead, down that white road that ribbons to the sky.
Her little lap-dog at her feet, in scarlet collar drest,Can climb upon her silken knee or nestle to her breast;But black and dry are those wild lips that once her red mouth prest!
A flight of birds across the moor drifts low o'er blossomy ways;A cloud of butterflies comes out on sunshine girdled days;And these are light and pleasant things for any lady's gaze.
But never looks she right nor left beneath these ardent skies,At hawthorn thick with bloom and bees; for to her staring eyesAcross that beaten trail of white a gibbet's shadow lies.
The gossips at St. James's had a pungent tale last year—'Twas whispered loud in anteroom, and low to sovereign's ear,And rolled as morsel on the tongue of ladies sour and sere:
The highwayman had snatched, they said, my lady from my lord,And ta'en her to some mountain glen to share his bed and board.They tracked his silver stallion's hoofs by pool and fen and sward.
The King sent down his redcoat men to bring my lady home.The Court were chattering for a week, like all the geese in Rome;The priest had shrived my lady till her soul was white as foam.
They seized the madcap highwayman, and, ere they swung him highAbove the breaking hawthorn buds that laughed towards the sky,They asked him would he pardon crave before he came to die.
But with a laugh that surely must have spawned a jest in hell,Said he, "Go speak her ladyship if she her lord can tellThat any lips beside my own have kissed her mouth so well."
My lord grew purple in the face; he stamped and raved and swore;And to the open, wind-blown heath the highwayman they bore,And hanged him on a common tree where footpads hanged before.
But oh, he had a princely air, and many a blue-eyed maidCrept to the ingle fire that night, of wandering afraidBecause the wind among the chains like ghostly fingers played;
And, shriven of another's sin, my lady rides to town.My lord has bought her golden shoes and many a costly gown,My lady to St. James's goes, to live the gossip down.
But on this merry Summer's morn, across the budding leas,With absent fingers she has drawn the lap-dog to her knees,Remembering traitor lips that left such memories.