by Brett Rutherford
after a
dirge by Robert Surtees
Her
lover died at the Nine-Stone Rig
from
seven brothers’ rage;
nine
the arrows that shower’d down,
arms,
heart, and throat, and eye
a-shiver
with the hate-fletched shafts,
a-quake
with their envenom’d darts,
a
double death of blood and poison,
all this to avenge a virginity lost!
They
shot him dead at the Nine-Stone Rig,
beside
the cursèd cross of Thor
(false
Dane who absolution shunned),
a
fitting place to die.
They
left him lying in his blood,
red
on green moss, black on brown earth.
The
fled and vowed to kill again
if
her illicit union spawn’d.
A
Lapland wind, a raven dark,
lapped
at the blood and plucked the eye,
the
one blue orb unarrow’d,
and
brought it to the lady fair.
She
fainted, for she knew that eye,
beneath
which she had loved and sigh’d.
And
then she summon’d her menials
to
search the wet, cold ground for him.
They
made a bier from broken boughs
of
the birch and the aspen gray.
Nine
arrows they broke and cast away
at
the foot of the Headless Cross.
They
bore him to Our Lady’s Chapel.
None
dared to refuse his passing-in.
The
lady arrived. Her servant brought
The
azure eye in a silver chalice.
She
placed the eye in the blacken’d hole
where
once it had glistened and tear’d.
The
other had but the stump of wood
where
the unkindest dart of all
Had
blinded him, and reft her soul.
They
waked him there all day; by night
the
tapers burned as monks and nuns
gave
out heart-rending Requiems.
As
they came at last to bear him off,
the
lady threw her robes aside,
in
favor of an ashen shift sleev’d
and
collar’d with crimson and black.
With
waters blessed from Our Lady’s well,
she
bathed the corpse, and washed it clean
of
the thrice-three poison’d wounds.
(Her wound only did she not regret).
She
plaited a garland for on his breast,
and
a garland for on his hair.
The
raven upon her shoulder lit.
The
Lapland wind made dark the room
As
the tapers all flickered and died.
They
rolled him in a winding sheet
ah, lily-white it was! And as
the
Virgin’s water had him blessed
No
mark of blood appeared.
They
bore him to a new-made grave,
and
passing by the Chapel Garth
they
paused to let the Gray Friars sing
in
yet another Requiem. But where
would
the lady bury her lover?
Not
in the family crypt where bones
might
still be ravaged by those
same
seven brothers she now loathed!
Not
in some crowded churchy ground
where
twenty years hence they’d dig
and
pile his bones with strangers’ skulls!
She
chose the place, in dark of wood
where
first they had met, o fatal spot!
a
bower beneath a spreading beech.
In
murk of midnight they buried him,
where
the dew fell cold and still,
in
windless fell of untrembling leaf
where
the mists cling to the hill.
They
dug his grave just a bare foot deep,
where she had happily laid with him:
see
where the heather flower blooms,
and
the moss and the lady-fern.
A
Gray Frair stood upon that grave
and
sang until the sun rose true,
another sings yet for the lover's soul
at the foot of the Headless Cross.
— Op. 1055 February 2, 2020.
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