The Collected Works of William Morris :: :: University of Virginia Library

SHIPMASTER
Well, master merchant, you slept late this morn
Despite our drawing nigh our journey's end—
Well, you did well perchance being among friends:
For one day at the least a steady wind,
A cloudless sky and all things going well.

ANTHONY
Why, but to hear you things go not so well
Since now I go ashore—among unfriends
You seem to say. Yet was your word before
That this Lord Rolf the Red was a good lord
To those who dealt in peaceful wise with him;
And in no warlike wise I come, meseems.

SHIPMASTER
There now again I note you—looking round
As though to find a man or two to smite—
That's still your way, and sooth it seems to me
The nigher you come to land the hotter grows
Your blood. I warn you this good lord withal
His sword-blade nowise grows unto its sheath
And he is one of many, lord or thrall
Tis much the same—life is cheap enow
And one man's blow is like another's still.
A second warning: try your mocks on them,
They will not laugh belike or say a word
Though the hall roars around them: you shall think
Them dull and go on piling jeer and jeer;
But two hours thence, two hours or days or months,
As time serves, you shall find they understood.
Warning the third: some things here shall be bought—

330

Most things—a sword, a house, a horse, a wife:
You may want all these things except the last,
And certes you are rich enough to deal.
—Take this by the way that they may well deal thus,
Sell you a sword and thrust you through therewith,
Sell you a house and burn it o'er your head,
Sell you a horse and steal it the next morn,
Sell you a wife and bid her loose her tongue
Until you make a red mark on her face—
And then the district-court and her tall kin
And point and edge, or clink of the King's sweet face
Outside your purse—Well all that by the way,
But this I mean by the third: all women here—
Yea how you start—are marked and known and named
Daughter of this goodman, sister of that
Nor will gold buy them save in open wise,
As wives I mean—though you indeed may deal
In wares that please them, if to help your face,
Your song, your story of old time, your dance,
You therewithal could play well with the sword,
Or throw your hair back in the face of death
To show your cheeks no paler for the sight—
Eh! do I make too long a tale; you scowl:
Why don't you ask me then to make an end?
Turn round and look, we've weathered the last ness.
Off half a point, you helmsman! There it is
The stead we were to bring you to—though why
You were so eager after this man's fame
I know not. Does it like you well or ill?

ANTHONY
A place to be forgotten in, it seems
The hill-sides like a wall, the deep green sea
The pine-trees all above it—so there dwells
The man who tears his gold from out the fire.

331

SHIPMASTER
Yea, fire full hot enow—lo there the hall
Big enough for a king, the water deep
Up to the garth-gate; there on the round hill
Thor's temple—may Christ curse it! the ship-stocks,
One, two, three cutters, one great merchant-ship
Just newly pitched—the long-ships neither there;
If I had not a sort of name of friend
With him and his, that would not like me well;
I would not care to meet him in the main.

ANTHONY
What then, the lord is gone away belike?

SHIPMASTER
Most like, but since the winter comes apace
Tis but a matter of ten days at most
Ere he come back unless his fiends, his Gods
Have got his soul at last.

ANTHONY
Nay, God forbid!

SHIPMASTER
Why art thou eager? wouldst thou see him live?

ANTHONY
Nay by the saints, but I would see him die—
Tell him my name first!

SHIPMASTER
There it all comes out.
I doubted this, fair merchant, God to aid
Thou hadst a look of Jonah in the face
E'en from the first; well, full certainly
There gapes the whale for thee stranded ashore,
But a dark cavern of ill hap.

332

ANTHONY
Good sooth,
Ill luck enow is still on my tongue's end
And in the corners of my eyes; what need
To say bewray me not, thou knowst not much—

SHIPMASTER
Why, [had] I said to Rolf thou wishedst him dead
He would laugh somewhat—drink nightlong with thee
And call thee to the ring of hazel wands
Wherein they fight next morn and then—

ANTHONY
What then?

SHIPMASTER
Is thy neck iron, he could cut it through,
E'en so I think; is thy sword as swift
As July lightning, three swords seem aloft
When his sword leaves the scabbard and he plays;
So say his own men, and our English folk
Have e'en such tales to tell of him at York
And Scarborough and Dunwich.

ANTHONY

Come thy ways
Below deck, shipmate, somewhat more away
From these long-eared east-countrymen, and then
You will soon learn the reason from my mouth
Why the mere killing him or being killed
Will not mend all for me.

Green unburnt slopes
Under the soft sun, smooth green waveless sea,
Too kind a world thou art for such as I.
When shall I bid farewell and learn what place
For such a restless helpless loveless man
Twixt lowest hell and highest heaven there is
Since earth is all at strife with all I am?