Classic Poem

The Normans bear away the praise of might
From other nations in this age of war,
And raise their glorious name from height to height
None other nation traverses so far;
And it might seem that numerous as the Dane,
Or Greek, or Saracen, the Normans are
For never battle joins on any plain
Without some band of Normans in the brunt,
Whose sovereign arms the victory ordain:
And through the seas the hidden isles they hunt
In shielded vessels, which those fleets of state,
That walk the orient waters, fear to affront.
Nor only in the field they arbitrate
Between the nations: they as pilgrims go
To every shrine on earth by faith made great,
Casino, Compostella, or the show
Of Tours, where all the relics may be found
That have been gathered in this age of woe.
Yea, in the Holy Places they abound
Above all others: neither infidel,
Nor sea, nor desert, shuts the sacred ground:
So that before their zeal invincible
The prospect of the world is open laid,
And they their lesson thence have learned full well
— — But if 'tis questioned, Whence be Normans made
Active above the others, who remain
Unmoving, darkened in ignoble shade,
I answer, that religion breaks the chain
That sordid custom forges, and sets free
To nobler works from daily toil and pain.
For other nations, chained upon the lea
In ceaseless labour, little guess or know
Beyond the feuds where they allotted be
In other nations the high seigneurs show
Seldom a spark, except in private war,
Of active conduct, or toward friend or foe:
Each baron in his fort peculiar
Makes of his lands and people wasteful dearth,
And doth from common enterprise debar,
Maintaining bloody bands that drain the earth,
Like packs, their neighbours to devour and bite,
Not join with them in any deed of worth
Thus France from blood and pillage hath respite
No single day: while all in peace abide
Through Normandy from duke to poorest knight.
No private war, no constant homicide
Distracts them; but as if one family
They live in their domain from side to side.
So much in truth it profits them to be
The soldiers of the Church; which is their boast:
And the high liegemen of the Holy See.
They go forth at her bidding as one host,
Plant where she wills their hardy colonies,
And when she leads the way, achieve the most
But woe is me, that in this brave land lies
A cankerworm beneath the glorious show;
Peace rests on pain, renown on miseries
The peasants groan and wail in ceaseless woe,
Weighed down by tolls, by services and dues,
Which to their mighty lords they ever owe
No task of them required may they refuse,
But, for themselves, to fish, or hunt, or snare,
Or fell the forest trees, they may not use:
Neither to spend upon themselves they dare;
For all the Normans hold themselves to be
Equal as masters, having common care:
And hold the land by their confederacy,
Crushing the Frank and Breton, whom they found,
What time in ships they first came over sea
Which rigour wrought those children of the ground
To that mad rising, whose most sure defeat
Fell, ere the millenary year went round
— — Well is it known, ere Richard took his seat
About that time, how under shade of night
The desperate foresters would ofttimes meet:
Until the Count of Evreux, Robert hight,
The Archbishop of Rouen, upon them fell
With a great following, by force and might.
That cruel lord broke their conventicle,
And pined them with torments in strange wise,
That dire examples might their courage quell.
Some he impaled, of some put out the eyes,
Of some he burned the members in quick lime,
And other nameless things did he devise.
The recollection of that hideous crime
I hold as parcel of the misery
Which I in convent suffered at the time. —
The bones that had been broken came to me
And to my piteous brethren, aching still
When all the fame thereof had ceased to be
And slowly some we mended of their ill,
And pitied all; while question inly rose
Why some had right others to hold at will. —
" These poor men feel, " methought, " as keen as those
Who so bestride them, nobles lithe and strong:
And yet bear those the whip, and these the blows.
" These have no place the lawgivers among,
But in their masters' eyes their statutes read
And must obey, smarting with bitter wrong —
" Yet if to government they should succeed,
With wrongs would they redub the wrongs they felt,
Shake down the state, and furiously be freed
" A bloody retribution would be dealt;
Mean vice would reign: then lands and holdings all
Into poor common portions they would melt.
" Then where were greatness, where were glory's call,
The arts, and whatsoever makes it good
That man exist beneath the fire-bright ball? "
And as to the abstract right, whether it stood
That few or many ruled, I could not tell;
But with the few still went the likelihood.
— — Thus with our minds discoursed we, at one spell
I ending poor wounds, and building up anon
By nobles' gifts our convent citadel:
And not much moved by us the world went on