The most eminent Catholic poet of our own day, Sir Aubrey de Vere, in his Saxon legends, likewise refers to it. He describes first what
"Gentlest form kneels on the rain-washed ground,
From Giling's Keep a stone's throw. Whose those hands
Now pressed in anguish on a bursting heart.
… What purest mouth
"Presses a new-made grave, and through the blades
Of grass wind shaken, breathes her piteous prayer?
… Oswin's grave it is,
And she that o'er it kneels is Eanfleda,
Kinswoman of the noble dead, and wife
To Oswin's murderer—Oswy."
Again, describing the repentance of Oswy:
"One Winter night
From distant chase belated he returned,
And passed by Oswin's grave. The snow, new fallen,
Whitened the precinct. In the blast she knelt,
She heard him not draw nigh. She only beat
Her breast, and, praying, wept. Our sin! our sin!
"So came to him those words. They dragged him down:
He knelt beside his wife, and beat his breast,
And said, 'My sin! my sin!' Till earliest morn
Glimmered through sleet that twain wept on, prayed on:—
Was it the rising sun that lit at last
The fair face upward lifted?
……. Aloud she cried,
'Our prayer is heard: our penitence finds grace.'
Then added: 'Let it deepen till we die.
A monastery build we on this grave:
So from this grave, while fleet the years, that prayer
Shall rise both day and night, till Christ returns
To judge the world,—a prayer for him who died;
A prayer for one who sinned, but sins no more!'"
In the grant preserved in the Bodleian Collection, wherein Editha the
Good, the widow of Edward the Confessor, confers certain lands upon the
Church of St. Mary at Sarum, occurs the following:
"I, Editha, relict of King Edward, give to the support of the Canons of St. Mary's Church, in Sarum, the lands of Secorstan, in Wiltshire, and those of Forinanburn, to the Monastery of Wherwell, for the support of the nuns serving God there, with the rights thereto belonging, for the soul of King Edward." [1]
[Footnote 1: "Phillips' Account of Old Sarum.">[
This queen was buried in Westminster Abbey, her remains being removed from the north to the south side of St. Edward's shrine, on the rebuilding of that edifice, and it is recorded that Henry III. ordered a lamp to be kept burning perpetually at the tomb of Editha the Good.