Shameful Death

There were four of us about that bed;

The mass-priest knelt at the side,

I and his mother stood at the head,

Over his feet lay the bride;

We were quite sure that he was dead,

Though his eyes were open wide.

He did not die in the night,

He did not die in the day,

But in the morning twilight

His spirit pass’d away,

When neither sun nor moon was bright,

And the trees were merely grey.

He was not slain with the sword,

Knight’s axe, or the knightly spear,

Yet spoke he never a word

After he came in here;

I cut away the cord

From the neck of my brother dear.

He did not strike one blow,

For the recreants came behind,

In a place where the hornbeams grow,

A path right hard to find,

For the hornbeam boughs swing so,