MARIAN
O Robin,
Give me your word that you'll go back and rest,
When you have seen them.
ROBIN
Yes, I will try, I will try!
But oh, the sunlight! Where better, sweet, than this?
[She leads him to the throne of turf and he sits down upon it, with Marian at his side.]
The Friar is right. This life is wine, red wine,
Under the greenwood boughs! Oh, still to keep it,
One little glen of justice in the midst
Of multitudinous wrong. Who knows? We yet
May leaven the whole world.
[Enter the Outlaws, with several prisoners, among them, a Knight, an Abbot, and a Forester.]
Those are the prisoners?
You had some victims of the forest laws
That came to you for help. Bring them in, too,
And set them over against these lords of the earth!
[Some ragged women and children appear. Several serfs with iron collars round their necks and their eyes put out, are led gently in.]
Is that our Lincoln green among the prisoners?
There? One of my own band?