Ye Last Scene of All.
Gaping and yawning,
Their feather-beds scorning,
All the burghers of Ghent rose betimes in the morning,
For a “shocking event”
Was to take place in Ghent,
And the public delighted in hangings and quarterings,
Mutilations and tortures, and such kind of slaughterings,
Just as much as an Anglican crowd in the present day,
Think attending the “Manning” finale a pleasant day;
So extremely they bustled,
Pushed, jostled, and hustled,
Climbed up lamp-posts, (there were none!) on each rising ground
Stood to view the procession, as slowly it wound
Its way to the cathedral, where, at the high altar
The condemned was “pro se”
To appear, or else be
Declared recusant, most contumacious, defaulter,
Et cetera, et cetera, in fact, all the “bosh”
That the law could devise, horrid stuff which wont wash,
And yet seems to last pretty well through all ages,
Keeps solicitors going, and provides their clerks wages.
’Twas a splendid and beautiful pageant, that same;
First a body of archers and shield-bearers came;
Then some dear little choristers, dressed all in white,
Who each carried a chandelle bénie, or “child’s light,”
Which, being blessed by the Pope, it appears to my thick head,
Must, in spite of its wick, have no longer been wicked;
Next came Abbot Geraldus, profusely ornate
With mitre, and crosier, and garments of state;
Then the Herald de Rodon, in great exultation,
Highly pleased with himself, and the whole “situation;”
Then a servitor, bearing
A big candle, flaring
Up like mad, and creating a vast cloud of vapour,
Or smoke, (which affair was a “penitent taper,”)
On a silver “Lavabo,” a word which they say,
In middle-age Latin, means simply a tray;
And after this penitent candle there came
Our penitent heroine, looking the same,
And feeling—however, I’ll leave you to guess
How the poor thing would feel in so cruel a mess.
Then came something of which the description we’d best give
Is, like Tennyson’s rhymes, it was “sweetly suggestive”—
A large shield, in the centre whereof was depicted
A hand lately severed,—the artist, addicted
(’Twas De Rodon himself) to pre-Raphaelite rules,
Had made the wrist “sanglant” with drops from it “gules.”
Then directly behind this agreeable affair
Came the city “Jack Ketch” with his horrid axe bare!
Then more spearmen; and then rushed the crowd out of breath,
With their eagerness all to be in at the death.
Her eyes dim with despair,
All dishevelled her hair,
And the fair “forfeit hand” with its rounded arm bare,
With brow madly throbbing, and footsteps that falter,—
The wretched Yolenta is led to the altar;
While De Rodon proclaims,
By his titles and names,
That the Lord Lettelhausen, Grand Seigneur, and Knight
Of some half-dozen orders, demands as his right
The forfeited hand of the culprit Yolenta.
Then Geraldus replies, “By the general consent, a
Demand thus in accordance with justice and law
Is granted. Let Lord Lettelhausen now draw
Near the altar, and take, by the Church’s command,
As his right and possession, the forfeited hand!”
A stalwart arm is round her thrown,
Fondly the forfeit hand is pressed;
No more forsaken and alone,
She sinks upon a manly breast.
At length the evil days are past—
Her griefs, her trials, all are over,
Long wept, long sought, regained at last,
’Tis Loridon, her own true lover.
Whose Papa having very obligingly done
The genteel thing, in dying exactly when one
Would have wished him, by that means enabled his son
To step into his shoes, just in time to diskiver a
Mode of enacting the gallant deliverer;
As we’ve tried to rehearse
For your pleasure in verse,
If we’ve happened to fail,—and too clearly you know it,—
Bear in mind that we never set up for a Poet.
Frank E. S.