But there was a little grating in the door through which Prince Arthur called.  A hollow, dreary, murmuring voice replied.  It was the voice of the Red Cross Knight, which, when the champion heard, “with furious force and indignation fell” he rent that iron door and entered in.

Once more the Red Cross Knight was free and reunited to his Lady, while the false Duessa was unmasked and shown to be a bad old witch, who fled away “to the wasteful wilderness apace.”

But the Red Cross Knight was still so weak and feeble that Despair almost persuaded him to kill himself.  Seeing this, Una led him to the house of Holiness, where he stayed until once more he was strong and well.  Here he learned that he was St. George.  “Thou,” he is told,

    “Shalt be a saint, and thine own nation’s friend
    And patron.  Thou St. George shalt called be,
    St. George of merry England, the sign of victory.”

Once more strong of arm, full of new courage, the Knight set forth with Una, and soon they reached her home, where the dreadful Dragon raged.

Here the most fierce fight of all takes place.  Three days it is renewed, and on the third day the Dragon is conquered.

    “So down he fell, and forth his life did breathe
    That vanished into smoke and clouds swift;
    So down he fell, that th’ earth him underneath
    Did groan, as feeble so great load to lift;
    So down he fell, as an huge rocky clift
    Whose false foundation waves have washed away,
    With dreadful poise is from the mainland rift
    And rolling down, great Neptune doth dismay,
    So down he fell, and like an heaped mountain lay.”

Thus all ends happily.  The aged King and Queen are rescued from the brazen tower in which the Dragon had imprisoned them, and Una and the Knight are married.

That is the story of the first book of the Faery Queen.  In it Spenser has made great use of the legend of St. George and the Dragon.  The Red Cross of his Knight, “the dear remembrance of his dying Lord,” was in those days the flag of England, and is still the Red Cross of our Union Jack.  And besides the allegory the poem has something of history in it.  The great people of Spenser’s day play their parts there.  Thus Duessa, sad to say, is meant to be the fair, unhappy Queen of Scots, the wicked magician is the Pope, and so on.  But we need scarcely trouble about all that.  I repeat that meantime it is enough for you to enjoy the story and the poetry.

Chapter XLIII SPENSER—­HIS LAST DAYS

THERE are so many books now published which tell the stories of the Faery Queen, and tell them well, that you may think I hardly need have told one here.  But few of these books give the poet’s own words, and I have told the story here giving quotations from the poem in the hope that you will read them and learn from them to love Spenser’s own words.  I hope that long after you have forgotten my words you will remember Spenser’s, that they will remain in your mind as glowing word-pictures, and make you anxious to read more of the poem from which they are taken.