His bloodied banner crossed his mouth
Where he had kissed her name.
"O east, and west, and north, and south,
Fair flew my web, for shame,
To guide Death's aim!"
The tints were shredded from his shield
Where he had kissed her face.
"Oh, of all gifts that I could yield,
Death only keeps its place,
My gift and grace!"
The expression "my web" implies that the Queen had herself woven the material of the flag. The word "web" is not now often used in modern prose in this sense—we say texture, stuff, material instead. A shred especially means a small torn piece. "To shred from" would therefore mean to remove in small torn pieces—or, more simply expressed, to scratch off, or rend away. Of course the rich thick painting upon the shield is referred to. Repeated blows upon the surface would remove the painting in small shreds. This is very pathetic when rightly studied. She sees that all the presents she made to him, banner, sword, shield, have been destroyed in the battle; and with bitter irony, the irony of grief, she exclaims, "The only present I made him that could not be taken back or broken was death. Death was my grace, my one kindness!"
Then stepped a damsel to her side,
And spoke, and needs must weep;
"For his sake, lady, if he died,
He prayed of thee to keep
This staff and scrip."
That night they hung above her bed,
Till morning wet with tears.
Year after year above her head
Her bed his token wears,
Five years, ten years.
That night the passion of her grief
Shook them as there they hung
Each year the wind that shed the leaf
Shook them and in its tongue
A message flung.
We must suppose the Queen's bed to have been one of the great beds used in the Middle Ages and long afterwards, with four great pillars supporting a kind of little roof or ceiling above it, and also supporting curtains, which would be drawn around the bed at night. The staff and scrip and the token would have been hung to the ceiling, or as the French call it ciel, of the bed; and therefore they might be shaken by a passion of grief—because a woman sobbing in the bed would shake the bed, and therefore anything hung to the awning above it.
And once she woke with a clear mind
That letters writ to calm
Her soul lay in the scrip; to find
Only a torpid balm
And dust of palm.
Sometimes when we are very unhappy, we dream that what we really wish for has happened, and that the sorrow is taken away. And in such dreams we are very sure that what we were dreaming is true. Then we wake up to find the misery come back again. The Queen has been greatly sorrowing for this man, and wishing she could have some news from his spirit, some message from him. One night she dreams that somebody tells her, "If you will open that scrip, you will find in it the message which you want." Then she wakes up and finds only some palm-dust, and some balm so old that it no longer has any perfume—but no letter.
They shook far off with palace sport
When joust and dance were rife;
And the hunt shook them from the court;
For hers, in peace or strife,
Was a Queen's life.
A Queen's death now: as now they shake
To gusts in chapel dim,—
Hung where she sleeps, not seen to wake
(Carved lovely white and slim),
With them by him.
It would be for her, as for any one in great sorrow, a consolation to be alone with her grief. But this she cannot be, nor can she show her grief to any one, because she is a Queen. Only when in her chamber, at certain moments, can she think of the dead knight, and see the staff and scrip shaking in their place, as the castle itself shakes to the sound of the tournaments, dances, and the gathering of the great hunting parties in the court below.
In that age it was the custom when a knight died to carve an image of him, lying asleep in his armour, and this image was laid upon his long tomb. When his wife died, or the lady to whom he had been pledged, she was represented as lying beside him, with her hands joined, as if in prayer. You will see plenty of these figures upon old tombs in England. Usually a nobleman was not buried in the main body of a large church, but in a chapel—which is a kind of little side-church, opening into the great church. Such is the case in many cathedrals; and some cathedrals, like Westminster, have many chapels used as places of burial and places of worship. On the altar in these little chapels special services are performed for the souls of the dead buried in the chapel. It is not uncommon to see, in such a chapel, some relics of the dead suspended to the wall, such as a shield or a flag. In this poem, by the Queen's own wish, the staff and scrip of the dead knight are hung on the wall above her tomb, where they are sometimes shaken by the wind.