Next morn from the grave two oak-trees fair,
Shot lusty boughs high up in air;
And in their boughs—oh wondrous sight!—
Two happy doves, all snowy white—
That sang, as ever the morn did rise,
And then flew up—into the skies!
Alain the Fox.
The bearded fox is yelping, yelp, yelping through the glades;
Woe to the foreign rabbits! His eyes are two keen blades.
His teeth are keen; his feet are swift; his nails are red with blood.
Alain the fox is yelping war: yelp, yelping in the wood.
The Bretons making sharp their arms of terror I did see,
It was on cuirasses of Gaul, not stones of Brittany.
The Bretons reaping did I see, upon the fields of war;
It was not notched reaping-hooks, but swords of steel they bore.
They reapt no wheat of our own land, they reaped not our rye;
But the beardless ears, the beardless ears of Gaul and Saxony.
I saw upon the threshing-floor the Bretons threshing corn:
I saw the beaten chaff fly out from beardless ears off-torn.