No, Palmerin, unbuckle not thy arms,
Guard well thy lady's sleep.
Haply the wizards of the wood have charms
To make a virgin weep.
All goblin sprites and fairies of the trees
That lead their impish dance
Will spy thy mantle's cross; their blood will freeze
To see a Christian lance.
Hark! the old croaking frogs, and the far din
Of crickets in the field.
They bid me welcome home. "Hie, Palmerin,
Once of the argent shield,
"What's this device? Is Flerida this flower,
And these five pearls her tears,
Shed for thy love in her disconsolate bower
These five unhappy years?
"Those sable bars athwart a field of gules,
Are they thy nights and days
Spent mid bluff captains and rash drunken fools
In marches, bouts, and frays?"
Ay, ye chirp well, if I divine your note,
Ye civil, croaking elves!
A foolish master have your fields and moat
And your so learned selves.
Nothing he knows of wit or bookish lore
And nothing of the fair,
Only to break the brutal front of war
And half repeat a prayer.
Yet this sad wight is he, as fairies know,
Whom Flerida hath blest,
Soon locked within her arms. She long ago
Was locked within his breast,
Celestial Flerida, whom all the hours
Adorning from her birth
Have crowned the queen of stars, the queen of flowers,
The queen of maids on earth.
Her peerless heart hath chosen him her lord,
The rare intrepid maid,
Whose tender hand incarnadined a sword
Lest he should be betrayed.
Out of his nothingness her bounteous love
Bred all his poor desert
As God lent to the void he made us of
His image for a heart.
Like to the dateless dark before our birth
Are those five winters past,
This vigil like the twilight life of earth,
Then paradise at last
And changeless love. How in the paling skies
The star of morning burns!
Open, heaven's gates! Eternal sun, arise!
Sir Palmerin returns.