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(A Story told in the “Gesta Romanorum”)
TO one full sound and quietly | |
| That slept, there came a heavy cry, | |
| “Awake! arise! for thou hast slain | |
| A man.” “Yea, have I to mine own pain,” | |
| |
| He answered; “but of ill intent | 5 |
| And malice am I that naught forecast | |
| As is the babe innocent. | |
| |
| “From sudden anger our strife grew. | |
| I hated not, in times past, | |
| Him whom unwittingly I slew.” | 10 |
| |
| “If it be thus indeed, thy case | |
| Is hard,” they said; “for thou must die, | |
| Unless with the Judge thou can’st find grace. | |
| Hast thou, in thine extremity, | |
| Friends soothfast for thee to plead?” | 15 |
| |
| Then said he, “I have friends three: | |
| One 1 whom in word, and will, and deed | |
| From my youth I have served, and loved before | |
| Mine own soul, and for him striven; | |
| To him was all I got given; | 20 |
| And the longer I lived, I have loved him more. | |
| |
| And another 2 have I, whom, sooth to tell, | |
| I love as I love my own heart well, | |
| And the third, 3 I cannot now call | |
| To mind that ever loved at all | 25 |
| He hath been of me, or in aught served; | |
| And yet, maybe, he hath well deserved | |
| That I should love him with the rest. | |
| |
| “Now will I first to the one loved best.” | |
| Said the first, “And art thou so sore bestead? | 30 |
| See, I have gained of cloth good store, | |
| So will I give thee three ells and more | |
| (If more thou needest) when thou art dead, | |
| To wrap thee. Now hie away from my door: | |
| “I have friends many, and little room.” | 35 |
| |
| And the next made answer, weeping sore | |
| “We will go with thee to the place of doom: | |
| There must we leave thee evermore.” | |
| |
| “Alack,” said the man, “and well-a-day!” | |
| But the third only answered, “Yea”; | 40 |
| And while the man spake, all to start soon, | |
| Knelt down and buckled on his shoon, | |
| And said, “By thee in the Judgment Hall | |
| I will stand, and hear what the Judge decree; | |
| And if it be death, I will die with thee, | 45 |
| Or for thee, as it may befall.” | |
