“I have found it,” he thought, “I will say of her what has never yet been said of any woman.  I will paint all Hell, all Purgatory, and all that is in them, to make more glorious the glory of her abode, and I will reveal to man that glory.  I will show her in the circle of spotless flame, among the rivers and rings of eternal light, which revolve around the inmost heart, the fiery rose, and move obedient to the Love which moves the sun.”  And his thought shaped itself into verse and he murmured to himself: 

     L’amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle.

EDWARD II.  AT BERKELEY CASTLE BY AN EYE-WITNESS (With apologies to Mr. H. Belloc)

The King had not slept for three nights.  He looked at his face in the muddy pool of water which had settled in the worn flagstones of his prison floor, and noticed that his beard was of a week’s growth.  Beads of sweat stood on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot.  In the room next door, which was the canteen, the soldiers were playing on a drum.  Over the tall hills the dawn was ruffling the clouds.  There was a faint glimmer on the waters of the river.  The footsteps of the gaolers were heard on the outer rampart.  At seven o’clock they brought the King a good dinner:  they allowed him burgundy from France, and yellow mead, and white bread baked in the ovens of the Abbey, although he was constrained to drink out of pewter, and plates were forbidden him.  Eustace, his page, timidly offered him music.  The King bade him sing the “Lay of the Sussex Lass,” which begins thus: 

     Triumphant, oh! triumphant now she stands,
     Above my Sussex, and above my sea! 
     She stretches out her thin ulterior hands
     Across the morning . . .

But the King, to whom memories were portentous, called for another song and Eustace sang a stave of that ballad which was made on the Pyrenees, and which is still unfinished (for the modern world has no need of these things), telling of how Lord Raymond drank in a little tent with Charlemagne: 

     Enormous through the morning the tall battalions run: 
     The men who fought with Charlemagne are very dearly done;
     The wine is dark beneath the night, the stars are in the sky,
     The hammer’s in the blacksmith’s hand in case he wants to try. 
     We’ll ride to Fontarabia, we’ll storm the stubborn wall,
     And I call.

     And Uriel and his Seraphim are hammering a shield;
     And twice along the valley has the horn of Roland pealed;
     And Cleopatra on the Nile, Iseult in Brittany,
     And Lancelot in Camelot, and Drake upon the sea;
     And behind the young Republic are the fellows with the flag,
     And I brag!