Now from the city, o'er the shadowy plain,
Backward they bend their way. From silent thoughts
The Maid awakening cried, " There was a time,
When thinking on my closing hour of life,
Though with a mind resolved, some natural fears
Shook my weak frame: but now the happy hour,
When this emancipated soul shall burst
The cumbrous fetters of mortality,
I look for wishfully. Conrade! my friend,
This wounded heart would feel another pang
Shouldst thou forsake me.'
"Joan!" the chief replied,
"Along the weary pilgrimage of life
Together will we journey, and beguile
The painful way with hope, . . such hope as fix'd On heavenly things, brings with it no deceit, Lays up no food for sorrow, and endures
From disappointment safe."
They reach'd the camp, yet hush'd; there separating, Each in the post allotted, restless waits
Morning came: dim through the shade The twilight glimmers; soon the brightening clouds Imbibe the rays, and o'er the landscape spread The dewy light. The soldiers from the earth Arise invigorate, and each his food
Receives, impatient to renew the war.
Dunois his javelin to the Tournelles points, "Soldiers of France! behold your foes are there!" As when a band of hunters, round the den
Of some wood-monster, point their spears, elate
In hope of conquest and the future feast,
When on the hospitable board their spoil
Shall smoke, and they, as foaming bowls go round,
Tell to their guests their exploits in the chase;
They with their shouts of exultation make
The forest ring; so elevate of heart,
With such loud clamours for the fierce assault
The French prepare. Nor, keeping now the lists
Dare the disheartened English man to man
Meet the close conflict. From the barbican,
Or from the embattled wall at random they
Their arrows and their death-fraught enginery
Discharged; meantime the Frenchmen did not cease
With well-directed shafts their loftier foes
To assail: behind the guardian pavais fenced,
They at the battlements their arrows aim'd,
Showering an iron storm, whilst o'er the bayle,
The bayle now levell'd by victorious France,
The assailants pass'd with all their mangonels;
Or tortoises, beneath whose roofing safe,
They, filling the deep moat, might for the towers
Make fit foundation; or with petraries,
161
War-wolves, and beugles, and that murderous sling
The matafund, from whence the ponderous stone
Made but one wound of him whom in its way,
It met; no pious hand might then compose
The crush'd and mangled corpse to be conveyed
To where his fathers slept: a dreadful train
Prepared by Salisbury o'er the town besieged
For hurling ruin; but that dreadful train
Must hurl its ruin on the invader's head,
Such retribution righteous heaven decreed.
Nor lie the English trembling, for the fort
Was ably garrison'd. Glacidas, the chief,
A gallant man, sped on from place to place
Cheering the brave; or if an archer's hand,
Palsied with fear, shot wide his ill-aim'd shaft,
Driving him from the ramparts with reproach
And shame. He bore an arbalist himself,
A weapon for its sure destructiveness
Abominated once; wherefore of yore
The assembled fathers of the Christian church Pronounced the man accursed whose impious hand Should use the murderous engine.
Befitted them as ministers of peace,
To promulgate, and with a warning voice,
Το
cry aloud and spare not, 'woe to them
Whose hands are full of blood!'
The lion-hearted Richard, their decree
First broke, and rightly was he doom'd to fall
By that forbidden weapon; since that day
Frequent in fields of battle, and from far
To many a good knight bearing his death wound
From hands unknown. With such an instrument
Arm❜d on the ramparts, Glacidas his eye
Cast on the assailing host. A keener glance
Darts not the hawk when from the feather'd tribe
He chose, who kneeling by the trebuchet, Charged its long sling with death. Him Glacidas Secure behind the battlements, beheld,
And strung his bow; then bending on one knee,
He in the groove the feather'd quarrel placed,
And levelling with sure eye, his victim mark'd.
The bow-string twang'd, swift on its way the dart
Whizz'd, and it struck, there where the helmet's clasps
Defend the neck; a weak protection now, 206
For through the tube which draws the breath of life
Pierced the keen shaft; blood down the unwonted way
Gush'd to the lungs : prone fell the dying man
Grasping, convulsed, the earth; a hollow groan 210
In his throat struggled, and the dews of death
Stood on his livid cheek. The days of youth
He had pass'd peaceful, and had known what joys
Domestic love bestows, the father once
Of two fair children; in the city hemm'd
During the siege, he had beheld their cheeks
Grow pale with famine, and had heard their cries
For bread. His wife, a broken-hearted one,
Sunk to the cold grave's quiet, and her babes
With hunger pined, and follow'd; he survived, 220
A miserable man, and heard the shouts
Of joy in Orleans, when the Maid approach'd,
As o'er the corpse of his last little one
He heap'd the unhallowed earth. To him the foe Perform'd a friendly part, hastening the hour 225 Grief else had soon brought on.
The English chief, Pointing again his arbalist, let loose
The string; the quarrel, by that impact driven,
True to its aim, fled fatal: one it struck
Dragging a tortoise to the moat, and fix'd
Deep in his liver; blood and mingled gall
Flow'd from the wound, and writhing with keen pangs,
Headlong he fell. He for the wintry hour
ballad and quaint tale,
Knew many a merry
A man in his small circle well-beloved.
None better knew with prudent hand to guide
The vine's young tendrils, or at vintage time
To press the full-swoln clusters; he, heart-glad,
Taught his young boys the little all he knew,
Enough for happiness. The English host
Laid waste his fertile fields: he, to the war,
By want compell'd, adventured, in his gore
Now weltering.
Nor the Gallic host remit
Their eager efforts; some, the watery fence,
Beneath the tortoise roof'd, with engines apt
Drain painful; part, laden with wood, throw there
Their buoyant burthens, labouring so to gain
Firm footing: some the mangonels supply,
Or charging with huge stones the murderous sling, Or petrary, or in the espringal
Fix the brass-winged arrows: hoarse around
The uproar and the din of multitudes
Arose. Along the ramparts Gargrave went,
Cheering the English troops; a bow he bore;
The quiver rattled as he moved along.
He knew aright to aim his feather'd shafts,
Well-skill'd to pierce the mottled roebuck's side,
O'ertaken in his speed. Him passing on,
A ponderous stone from some huge martinet,
Struck on his breast-plate falling, the huge weight
Shattered the bone, and to his mangled lungs 261
Drove in the fragments. On the gentle brow
Of a fair hill, wood-circled, stood his home,
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