And many past, but none regarded her,
  For in that realm of lawless turbulence,
  A woman weeping for her murder’d mate
  Was cared as much for as a summer shower: 
  One took him for a victim of Earl Doorm,
  Nor dared to waste a perilous pity on him: 
  Another hurrying past, a man-at-arms,
  Rode on a mission to the bandit Earl;
  Half whistling and half singing a coarse song,
  He drove the dust against her veilless eyes: 
  Another, flying from the wrath of Doorm
  Before an ever-fancied arrow, made
  The long way smoke beneath him in his fear;
  At which her palfrey whinnying lifted heel
  And scour’d into the coppices and was lost,
  While the great charger stood, grieved like a man.

    But at the point of noon the huge Earl Doorm,
  Broad-faced with under-fringe of russet beard,
  Bound on a foray, rolling eyes of prey,
  Came riding with a hundred lances up;
  But ere he came, like one that hails a ship,
  Cried out with a big voice, “What, is he dead?”
  “No, no, not dead!” she answer’d in all haste. 
  “Would some of your kind people take him up,
  And bear him hence out of this cruel sun? 
  Most sure am I, quite sure, he is not dead.”

    Then said Earl Doorm:  “Well, if he be not dead,
  Why wail ye for him thus? ye seem a child. 
  And be he dead, I count you for a fool;
  Your wailing will not quicken him:  dead or not,
  Ye mar a comely face with idiot tears. 
  Yet, since the face is comely—­some of you,
  Here, take him up, and bear him to our hall: 
  An if he live, we will have him of our band;
  And if he die, why earth has earth enough
  To hide him.  See ye take the charger too,
  A noble one.”

                He spake, and past away,
  But left two brawny spearmen, who advanced,
  Each growling like a dog, when his good bone
  Seems to be pluck’d at by the village boys
  Who love to vex him eating, and he fears
  To lose his bone, and lays his foot upon it,
  Gnawing and growling:  so the ruffians growl’d,
  Fearing to lose, and all for a dead man,
  Their chance of booty from the morning’s raid,
  Yet raised and laid him on a litter-bier,
  Such as they brought upon their forays out
  For those that might be wounded; laid him on it
  All in the hollow of his shield, and took
  And bore him to the naked hall of Doorm,
  (His gentle charger following him unled)
  And cast him and the bier in which he lay
  Down on an oaken settle in the hall,
  And then departed, hot in haste to join
  Their luckier mates, but growling as before,
  And cursing their lost time, and the dead man,
  And their own Earl, and their own souls, and her. 
  They might as well have blest her:  she was deaf
  To blessing or to cursing save from one.