of the town there about were soon left empty and peaceful.
So he turned into a street narrower than most, that went east
from the South Gate and was much shaded from the afternoon sun,
and went slowly down it, meaning to come about the inside of
the wall till he should hit the East Gate, and so into the Great
Place when the folk should have gone their ways home.

He saw no folk in the street save here and there an old woman
sitting at the door of her house, and maybe a young child with her.
As he came to where the street turned somewhat, even such a
carline was sitting on a clean white door-step on the sunny side,
somewhat shaded by a tall rose-laurel tree in a great tub, and she
sang as she sat spinning, and Ralph stayed to listen in his idle mood,
and he heard how she sang in a dry, harsh voice:

Clashed sword on shield In the harvest field;
And no man blames The red red flames,
War's candle-wick On roof and rick.
Now dead lies the yeoman unwept and unknown
On the field he hath furrowed, the ridge he hath sown:
And all in the middle of wethers and neat
The maidens are driven with blood on their feet;
For yet 'twixt the Burg-gate and battle half-won
The dust-driven highway creeps uphill and on,
And the smoke of the beacons goes coiling aloft,
While the gathering horn bloweth loud, louder and oft.

Throw wide the gates
For nought night waits;
Though the chase is dead