And clear'd a space to lie:--
'Thank God!'--no more;--nor now could life
From loved and lost divide him:--
And night fell o'er De Montfort dead,
And England wept beside him.

In the words given here to Simon (and, indeed, in the bulk of my
narrative) I have almost literally followed Prothero's _Life_. The
struggle, like other critical conflicts in the days of unprofessional
war, was very brief.



THE DIRGE OF LLYWELYN


December 10: 1282

Llanyis on Irfon, thine oaks in the drear
Red eve of December are wind-swept and sere,
Where a king by the stream in his agony lies,
And the life of a land ebbs away as he dies.

Caradoc, thy sceptre for centuries kept,
Shall it pass like the ripple, unhonour'd, unwept:
Unknowing the lance, and the victim unknown,
Far from Aberffraw's halls and Eryri the lone!

O dark day of winter and Cambria's shame,
To the treason of Builth when from Gwynedd he came,