Page:Pleasant Memories.pdf/195

The mother's tear was on his rounded cheek,
When stately Beauchamp took him from her arms,
An infant of five summers to enforce
His knightly training. Pressed the iron hand
Of chivalry all harshly on his soul,
Keeping its pulses down, till the free stream
Of thought was petrified? Perchance the sway
Of such stern tutor might have bowed too low
What was too weak at first; and so, poor king,
Thou wert in vassalage thy whole life long,
The scorn of lawless spirits, on thy brow
Wearing a crown indeed, but in thy breast
Hiding the slave-chain.
                                In yon lofty hall,
Hung round with ancient armor, interspersed
With branching antlers of the hunted stag,
Fancy depictureth a warrior-shade,
The swarth king-maker, he who bore so high
His golden coronet, and on his shield
The Bear and ragged Staff. At his rough grasp
The warring roses quaked, and like the foam
That crests the wave one moment, and the next
Dies at its feet, alternate rose and sank
The crowned heads of York and Lancaster.
—Gone are those days with all their deeds of arms,
Their clangor echoing loud from shore to shore,
Rousing the "shepherd-maiden" from her flocks,
To buckle on strange armor and preserve
The endangered Gallic throne.