“Be this, I cried, his proper grave!—
(The thought in me was deadly sin.)
Aloft we raised the hapless chief,
And dropped his bleeding corpse within.”
A shriek from all the damsels burst,
That pierced the vaulted roofs below,
While horror-struck the lady stood,
A living form of sculptured woe.
With stupid stare, and vacant gaze,
Full on his face her eyes were cast,
Absorbed!—she lost her present grief,
And faintly thought of things long past.
Like wild-fire o’er the mossy heath,
The rumour through the hamlet ran:
The peasants crowd at morning dawn,
To hear the tale,—behold the man.
He led them near the blasted oak,
Then, conscious, from the scene withdrew:
The peasant’s work with trembling haste,
And lay the whitened bones to view!—
Back they recoiled!—the right hand still,
Contracted, grasped a rusty sword;
Which erst in many a battle gleamed,
And proudly decked their slaughtered lord.
They bore the corse to Vener’s shrine,
With holy rites, and prayers addressed;
Nine white-robed monks the last dirge sang,
And gave the angry spirit rest.
It must be remembered that the real history of Howel Sele’s death is to be collected from Mr. Pennant’s [account] of their sudden feud already related; though he by no means distinctly states whether Glyndwr caused him to be placed in the oak after he had been slain, or “immured” him alive and left him to perish. It is rather to be inferred that he was condemned by his kinsmen to the latter fate. According to Pennant he perished in the year 1402, and we see that his living burial place survived him, pierced and hallowed by the hand of time, upwards of four centuries.