 | The Poetical Works of Robert Story |  |
V.
I tell, my son, but what I saw and shared—I wot not how the other Leaders fared;
Wot not who yielded, who maintained, his post;
I only know the day, by us, was lost!
I only know that, save for prisoners ta'en,
The Danish Camp contained no living Dane!
And that brave Guthrum and myself, of those,
Had now, alas, become the prize of foes!
Me they at once disarmed, and would have slain;
But one exclaimed: “Hold! hold! It is the Dane
Who 'scaped from us in yon wild moonlight scene:
Better for him if there he still had been,
Than reckoning with our victor King to-day!”
The captors laughed, and dragged us thence away;
385
Before the Saxon King they humbly bent.
For—mournful change to come from one defeat!—
Their King now sat in Guthrum's honoured seat;
And Guthrum stood, his final doom to hear,
Where he had lately stood—and none his peer!
| The Poetical Works of Robert Story | |