Chapter XXVIII

Some half-hour’s march behind, there came,
By Eustace governed fair,
A troop escorting Hilda’s dame,
With all her nuns and Clare.
No audience had Lord Marmion sought;
Ever he feared to aggravate
Clara de Clare’s suspicious hate;
And safer ’twas, he thought,
To wait till, from the nuns removed,
The influence of kinsmen loved,
And suit by Henry’s self approved,
Her slow consent had wrought.
His was no flickering flame, that dies
Unless when fanned by looks and sighs,
And lighted oft at lady’s eyes;
He longed to stretch his wide command
O’er luckless Clara’s ample land;
Besides, when Wilton with him vied,
Although the pang of humbled pride
The place of jealousy supplied,
Yet conquest, by that meanness won
He almost loathed to think upon,
Led him, at times, to hate the cause
Which made him burst through honour’s laws
If e’er he loved, ’twas her alone
Who died within that vault of stone.