The queen before the singers from her bosom flings the rose.
“Ye have beguiled my people—will ye bring my wife to shame?”
So cries the king in fury, quivering through all his frame;
He hurls his sword, that flashing strikes through the stripling’s heart;
Now from the source of golden songs a blood-jet high doth start.
Strewn as by sudden tempest is all the listening swarm,
The youth hath sobbed his life out upon his master’s arm;
Upon his horse he sets him, wound in his mantle’s fold,
And fastly binds him upright, and quits with him the hold.
But at the high gate halting, the old man stands sublime,