The beam of day had kiss’d th’ horizon’s pate,
Ere Arnold reach’d the lodge at Rollingate.
His anxious mother, most expectant grown,
Went forth to meet him o’er the verdant lawn:
As he advanc’d she hasten’d onward, and
Another instant join’d the mutual hand.
She saw the storm his garb had disarranged,
And bade him quickly get his garment changed:
For at the festive-board, the guests were there
Awaiting him, with simultaneous care.
When now the mother introduced her son
The guests saluted him,—as should be done.
In the meantime Lord William, lit with joy,
Held high the goblet, and embraced his boy!
And said “come Arnold, my belovèd son,
Sit thou on my right hand.” The feast went on;
The silver tankard circled round the hall,
And knights and fair-ones quaff’d the radiant bowl.
Thus the blithe evening; (But that “cottage queen”
Still haunted Arnold ’midst the dazzling scene.)
Behold those weapons pensile on the walls,—
Huge carbines, fraught of yore with deadly balls;
Shields, bucklers, swords, rough usage seem’d to show,
And batter’d helmets point the mortal blow.
Their battle-work was long since nobly done:
And those who wielded them, ah! long since gone!
There also hung the pictures of the fray,
And him who won the laurels of the day:
He,[178] brave—though young—subdued the blazing fort;
Trusted in God, and—trusting—fought unhurt:
Return’d from war, with the surrender’d sword,
The king endowed him with a rich reward:—
He stoop’d a Baronet, and ’rose a “Lord.”
His country eulogised him, without bounds,
And gave him, also, forty-thousand pounds;
With which Lord William purchas’d the estate,—
The old manorial mansion,—“Rollingate.”
The guests had gone, about the midnight hour,
In various chariots, and the feast was o’er.
[178] Arnold’s father.