And now of their dooms dread tidings came,
And of torments fierce and dire;
And naught she spake—she had ceased to speak—
[131] But her eyes were a soul on fire.
But when I told her the bitter end
Of the stern and just award,
She leaned o'er the bier, and thrice three times
She kissed the lips of her lord.
And then she said, "My King, they are dead!"
And she knelt on the chapel floor,
And whispered low with a strange proud smile,
"James, James, they suffered more!"
Last she stood up to her queenly height,
But she shook like an autumn leaf,
As though the fire wherein she burned
Then left her body, and all were turned
To winter of life-long grief.
And "O James!" she said, "My James!" she said,
"Alas for the woeful thing,
That a poet true and a friend of man,
In desperate days of bale and ban,
Should needs be born a King!"