The Heretic Bard                                       

                                        PART ONE

                                                I

    THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
    The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
    The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
    And the heretic bard came riding—
                      Riding—riding—
    The heretic bard came riding, up to the cathedral door.

                                                II

    She’d stormy umber locks curled loosely, a string of silver ‘neath her chin,
    A coat of the inky velvet had been passed down from long dead kin;
    They fitted with never a wrinkle: her boots were up to the thigh!
    And she rode with a tarnished twinkle,
                      Her wooden flute a-twinkle,
    Her very skin a-twinkle, under the tarnished sky.

                                                III

    Over the cobbles she clattered and clashed in the cathedral yard,
    And she tapped with her flute on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
    She sang tenderly to the window, and who should be waiting there
    But the bishop’s blue-eyed daughter,
                      Spencer, the archbishop’s daughter,
    Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her dusk gold hair.

                                               IV

    They greeted each other eagerly; through rust love shines true.
    Though worn away by the wearying world their hope forever renews.
    She played a tune from the saddle, that told of a final escape
    As Spencer looked from above,
                     Smiled and praised from above,
    With mirroring smiles they gazed, and missed the sinister shape.