Tristram of Lyonesse and Other Poems/Anonymous Plays 3

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

XVIII.

ANONYMOUS PLAYS.

More yet and more, and yet we mark not all:
The Warning fain to bid fair women heed
Its hard brief note of deadly doom and deed;^[1]
The verse that strewed too thick with flowers the hall
Whence Nero watched his fiery festival;^[2]
That iron page wherein men’s eyes who read
See, bruised and marred between two babes that bleed,
A mad red-handed husband’s martyr fall;^[3]
The scene which crossed and streaked with mirth the strife
Of Henry with his sons and witchlike wife;^[4]
And that sweet pageant of the kindly fiend,
Who, seeing three friends in spirit and heart made one,
Crowned with good hap the true-love wiles he screened
In the pleached lanes of pleasant Edmonton.^[5]

1. A Warning for Fair Women.
2. The Tragedy of Nero.
3. A Yorkshire Tragedy.
4. Look about you.
5. The Merry Devil of Edmonton.