The monk he vanished where he stood;
King William sterte up wroth and wood;
Quod he, ‘Fools’ wits will jump together;
The Hampshire ale and the thunder weather
Have turned the brains for us both, I think;
And monks are curst when they fall to drink. 
A lothly sweven I dreamt last night,
How there hoved anigh me a griesly knight,
Did smite me down to the pit of hell;
I shrieked and woke, so fast I fell. 
There’s Tyrrel as sour as I, perdie,
So he of you all shall hunt with me;
A grimly brace for a hart to see.’

   The Red King down from Malwood came;
His heart with wine was all aflame,
His eyne were shotten, red as blood,
He rated and swore, wherever he rode. 
They roused a hart, that grimly brace,
A hart of ten, a hart of grease,
Fled over against the kinges place. 
The sun it blinded the kinges ee,
A fathom behind his hocks shot he: 
   ‘Shoot thou,’ quod he, ’in the fiendes name,
To lose such a quarry were seven years’ shame.’ 
And he hove up his hand to mark the game. 
Tyrrel he shot full light, God wot;
For whether the saints they swerved the shot,
’Or whether by treason, men knowen not,
But under the arm, in a secret part,
The iron fled through the kinges heart. 
The turf it squelched where the Red King fell;
And the fiends they carried his soul to hell,
Quod ‘His master’s name it hath sped him well.’

Tyrrel he smiled full grim that day,
Quod ‘Shooting of kings is no bairns’ play;’
And he smote in the spurs, and fled fast away. 
As he pricked along by Fritham plain,
The green tufts flew behind like rain;
The waters were out, and over the sward: 
He swam his horse like a stalwart lord: 
Men clepen that water Tyrrel’s ford. 
By Rhinefield and by Osmondsleigh,
Through glade and furze brake fast drove he,
Until he heard the roaring sea;
Quod he, ‘Those gay waves they call me.’ 
By Mary’s grace a seely boat
On Christchurch bar did lie afloat;
He gave the shipmen mark and groat,
To ferry him over to Normandie,
And there he fell to sanctuarie;
God send his soul all bliss to see.

And fend our princes every one,
From foul mishap and trahison;
But kings that harrow Christian men
Shall England never bide again.

In the New Forest, 1847,

THE OUTLAW

Oh, I wadna be a yeoman, mither, to follow my father’s trade,
To bow my back in miry banks, at pleugh and hoe and spade. 
Stinting wife, and bairns, and kye, to fat some courtier lord,—­
Let them die o’ rent wha like, mither, and I’ll die by sword.

Nor I wadna be a clerk, mither, to bide aye ben,
Scrabbling ower the sheets o’ parchment with a weary weary pen;
Looking through the lang stane windows at a narrow strip o’ sky,
Like a laverock in a withy cage, until I pine away and die.