The bards falter in shame, their running verse Stumbles, with marrow-bones the drunken diners Pelt them for their delay. It is a something fearful in the song Plagues them—an unknown grief that like a churl Goes common-place in cowskin And bursts unheralded, crowing and coughing, An unpilled holly-club twirled in his hand, Into their many-shielded, samite-curtained, Jewel-bright hall where twelve kings sit at chess Over the white-bronze pieces and the gold; And by a gross enchantment Flails down the rafters and leads off the queens— The wild-swan-breasted, the rose-ruddy-cheeked, Raven-haired daughters of their admiration— To stir his black pots and to bed on straw. |