Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/638

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II.
She sate those bearded lords among,
⁠Scorning the Lombard swine,
While they, with burly battle song,
Drained down, with clamours loud and long,
⁠The dark Falernian wine.

III.
The king in wrath hath started up:
⁠Grim grew his face and red,
“By the bleeding Rood! but thou shalt sup
The good wine from thy master’s cup,
⁠Made of thy father’s head.”

IV.
The king’s red face grew pale with ire,
⁠He smote upon the board:
“Pour up the wine which flames like fire,
And drink damnation to thy sire,
⁠And glory to thy lord!

V.
“Thy sire is rotting in his grave,
⁠Thy sire, my beaten hound,
And thou art but my leman-slave,
The whitest-bosomed toy I have,
⁠My lady Rosamond!”

VI.
She raised the scull-cup to her lips,
⁠Queenlike she gazed around,
Across her heart a shadow slips—
“Ah me! how sharp the memory grips
⁠Of wild Lord Cunimond!”

VII.
Smiling, she touched it, bubbling fresh,
⁠Like the broth of a wizard’s charm.—
That night she caught him in her mesh,
And slew him, gorged with wine and flesh,
⁠With her ivory-moulded arm.

VIII.
So sharply to his false heart sped
⁠The knife of Rosamond:
With his wild eyes all blurred with red,
Within the dwellings of the dead,
⁠He met Lord Cunimond!