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The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 by William Morris
page 8 of 110 (07%)
blow from the castle, and saw a rush of armed men on to the battlements,
and there was a fierce fight, till at last it was ended, and one went to
the banner and pulled it down, and cast it over the cliff in to the sea,
and it came down in long sweeps, with the wind making little ripples in
it;--slowly, slowly it came, till at last it fell over me and covered me
from my feet till over my breast, and I let it stay there and looked
again at the castle, and then I saw that there was an amber-coloured
banner floating over the castle in place of the red chevron, and it was
much larger than the other: also now, a man stood on the battlements,
looking towards me; he had a tilting helmet on, with the visor down, and
an amber-coloured surcoat over his armour: his right hand was
ungauntletted, and he held it high above his head, and in his hand was
the bunch of wallflowers that I had seen growing on the wall; and his
hand was white and small like a woman's, for in my dream I could see even
very far-off things much clearer than we see real material things on the
earth: presently he threw the wallflowers over the cliff, and they fell
in the boat just behind my head, and then I saw, looking down from the
battlements of the castle, Amyot. He looked down towards me very
sorrowfully, I thought, but, even as in the other dream, said nothing; so
I thought in my dream that I wept for very pity, and for love of him, for
he looked as a man just risen from a long illness, and who will carry
till he dies a dull pain about with him. He was very thin, and his long
black hair drooped all about his face, as he leaned over the battlements
looking at me: he was quite pale, and his cheeks were hollow, but his
eyes large, and soft, and sad. So I reached out my arms to him, and
suddenly I was walking with him in a lovely garden, and we said nothing,
for the music which I had heard at first was sounding close to us now,
and there were many birds in the boughs of the trees: oh, such birds!
gold and ruby, and emerald, but they sung not at all, but were quite
silent, as though they too were listening to the music. Now all this
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