No highwayman’s trot blew the night-wind
To me so life-weary,
But only the creak of the gibbets
Or waggoners’ jee.
Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly
Above me from southward,
And north the hill-fortress of Eggar,
And square Pummerie.
The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams,
The Axe, and the Otter
I passed, to the gate of the city
Where Exe scents the sea;
Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing,
I learnt ’twas not my Love
To whom Mother Church had just murmured
A last lullaby.
—“Then, where dwells the Canon’s kinswoman,
My friend of aforetime?”—
(’Twas hard to repress my heart-heavings
And new ecstasy.)
“She wedded.”—“Ah!”—“Wedded beneath her—
She keeps the stage-hostel
Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway—
The famed Lions-Three.
“Her spouse was her lackey—no option
’Twixt wedlock and worse things;
A lapse over-sad for a lady
Of her pedigree!”
I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered
To shades of green laurel:
Too ghastly had grown those first tidings
So brightsome of blee!
For, on my ride hither, I’d halted
Awhile at the Lions,
And her—her whose name had once opened
My heart as a key—
I’d looked on, unknowing, and witnessed
Her jests with the tapsters,
Her liquor-fired face, her thick accents
In naming her fee.