Against this rich, warm-tinted background is outlined a battle picture. Here begins the second movement. First the country itself, with its sunny fields and blossoming hedges; then the memory springing to life of great daring and heroic achievement:—-
Pardie! I nearly had won that crown
Which endureth more than a knight’s renown,
When the pagan giant had got me down,
Sore spent in the deadly grapple.
In a couple of resonant verses he explains why. The third movement begins when the woman enters. It is romance again, but romance of a more intense, more personal, more richly emotional kind. It forms the dominant note of this varied theme:—
The brown thrush sang through the briar and bower,
All flushed or frosted with forest flower,
In the warm sun’s wanton glances;
And I grew deaf to the song-bird—blind