The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan | ||
II.
Then Roland felt his sense return, and stirr'd, and cried,Felt down if Adalmar lay safe against his side,
And smiled most quietlie, for joy the Sword was there;
With heavy-mailed hand brush'd back his bloody hair,
And lying prone upon his back, beheld on high
The stars like leopard-spots strewn in the sapphire sky.
He turn'd his head, and lo! the large hills looming dim,
In the wan west the Moon with red and wasting rim;
Then sighing sore, swung round his head as in a swoon,
And met the hunchback's eyne, glazèd beneath the Moon.
Chill was the air, and frosty vapours to and fro,
Like sheeted shapes, in dim moonshine, were stealing slow;
And Roland thought, because his wound had made him weak,
187
Crawling unto his knees, shivering in the cold,
He loosed his helm, and dimly gleaming down it roll'd;
And darkly his dim eyes distinguish'd things around,—
The mute and moveless shapes asleep upon the ground,
A helm glittering dim, a sword-hilt twinkling red,
A white steed quivering beside a warrior dead,
And in one moonlit place, a ring on a white hand,
When Roland thought, ‘Gerard! the brightest of the band!’
And no one stirr'd; behind, the hills loom'd large and dim;
And in the west the waning Moon with red and wasting rim.
The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan | ||