Turned the great key and flung the portal wide;

A man rushed by him at a single stride, Haggard, half naked, without hat or cloak,

Who neither turned, nor looked at him, nor spoke,

But leaped into the blackness of the night,

And vanished like a spectre from his sight.

Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane

And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Despoiled of his magnificent attire, 51 Bareheaded, breathless, and besprent with mire,

With sense of wrong and outrage desperate,

Strode on and thundered at the palace gate;

Rushed through the courtyard, thrusting in his rage

To right and left each seneschal and page,

And hurried up the broad and sounding stair,

His white face ghastly in the torches' glare.

From hall to hall he passed with breathless speed;

Voices and cries he heard, but did not heed,

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Until at last he reached the banquet

Valmond returning to the Danube's shore,

Homeward the Angel journeyed, and again

The land was made resplendent with his train,

Flashing along the towns of Italy Unto Salerno, and from thence by sea. And when once more within Palermo's wall,

And, seated on the throne in his great hall,

He heard the angelus from convent towers,

As if the better world conversed with ours, 190

He beckoned to King Robert to draw nigher,

And with a gesture bade the rest retire; And when they were alone, the Angel said,

"Art thou the king?" Then, bowing down his head,

King Robert crossed both hands upon his breast,

And meekly answered him: "Thou knowest best!

My sins as scarlet are; let me go hence, And in some cloister's school of penitence,

Across those stones that pave the way to heaven

Walk barefoot, till my guilty soul be shriven!"1

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The Angel smiled, and from his radiant face

A holy light illumined all the place,

I shriven. Confessed (and forgiven).

The raven's croak, the low wind choked and drear,

The baffled stream, the gray wolf's doleful cry,

30 Were all the sounds that mariner could hear,

And through the wood he wandered painfully;

But as unto the house he drew anigh, The pillars of a ruined shrine he saw, The once fair temple of a fallen law."

No image was there left behind to tell Before whose face the knees of men had bowed;

An altar of black stone, of old wrought well,

Alone beneath a ruined roof now showed The goal whereto the folk were wont to crowd,

Seeking for things forgotten long ago, Praying for heads long ages laid a-low.

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