An Old Tale Retold by Madison Cawein — Read

/ From the terrace here, where the hills indent, / You can see the uttermost battlement / Of the castle there: the Clifford's home / Where the seasons go and the seasons come / And never a footstep else doth fall / Save the prowling fox's; the ancient hall / Echoes no voice save the owlet's call: / Its turret chambers are homes for the bat; / And its courts are tangled and wild to see; / And where in the cellar was once the rat, / The viper and toad move stealthily. / Long years have passed since the place was burned, / And he sailed to the wars in France and earned / The name that he bears of the bold and true / On his tomb. -- Long years, since my lord, Sir Hugh, / Lived, and I was his favorite page, / And the thing then happened; and he of an age / When a man will love and be loved again, / Or off to the wars or a monastery; / Or toil till he deaden his heart's hard pain; / Or drink and forget it and finally bury.

/ I was his page. And often we fared / Through the Clare demesne, in autumn, hawking -- / If the Baron had known, how they would have glared, / 'Neath their bushy brows, those eyes of mocking! -- / That last of the Strongbows, Richard, I mean -- / And growling some six of his henchmen lean / To mount and after this Clifford and hang / With his crop-eared page to the nearest oak, / How he would have cursed us while he spoke! / For Clare and Clifford had ever a fang / In the other's side. And I hear the clang / Of his rage in the hall when the hawker told -- / If he told! -- how we met on the autumn wold / His daughter, sweet Clara of Clare, the day / Her hooded tiercel its brails did burst, / And trailing its jesses, came flying our way -- / An untrained haggard the falconer cursed / While he tried to secure: -- as the eyas flew / Slant, low and heavily over us, Hugh, -- / Who saw it coming, and had just then cast / His peregrine hawk at a heron quarry, -- / In his saddle rising thus, as it passed / By the jesses caught, and to her did carry.