KING PHARAMOND

Nay, thou askest me this not as one without knowledge,
For thou know’st that my love in that land is abiding.

MASTER OLIVER

Yea—­woe worth the while—­and all wisdom hath failed me: 
Yet if thou wouldst tell me of her, I will hearken
Without mocking or mourning, if that may avail thee.

KING PHARAMOND

Lo, thy face is grown kind—­Thou rememberest the even
When I first wore the crown after sore strife and mourning?

MASTER OLIVER

Who shall ever forget it? the dead face of thy father,
And thou in thy fight-battered armour above it,
Mid the passion of tears long held back by the battle;
And thy rent banner o’er thee and the ring of men mail-clad,
Victorious to-day, since their ruin but a spear-length
Was thrust away from them.—­Son, think of thy glory
And e’en in such wise break the throng of these devils!

KING PHARAMOND

Five years are passed over since in the fresh dawning
On the field of that fight I lay wearied and sleepless
Till slumber came o’er me in the first of the sunrise;
Then as there lay my body rapt away was my spirit,
And a cold and thick mist for a while was about me,
And when that cleared away, lo, the mountain-walled country
’Neath the first of the sunrise in e’en such a spring-tide
As the spring-tide our horse-hoofs that yestereve trampled: 
By the withy-wrought gate of a garden I found me
’Neath the goodly green boughs of the apple full-blossomed;
And fulfilled of great pleasure I was as I entered
The fair place of flowers, and wherefore I knew not. 
Then lo, mid the birds’ song a woman’s voice singing. 
Five years passed away, in the first of the sunrise.
          [He is silent, brooding.

MASTER OLIVER

God help us if God is!—­for this man, I deemed him
More a glory of God made man for our helping
Than a man that should die:  all the deeds he did surely,
Too great for a man’s life, have undone the doer.

KING PHARAMOND (rousing himself)

Thou art waiting, my fosterer, till I tell of her singing
And the words that she sang there:  time was when I knew them;
But too much of strife is about us this morning,
And whiles I forget and whiles I remember.
          [Falls a-musing again.

MASTER OLIVER