Gallant Sir Robyn
by Andrea M. Newton
"How do you do, Sir Robyn, my dear?"
a maiden fair quoted on day,
as a gallant young knight passed her closeby
with apparently nothing to say.
He stared her up, and slowly down,
but nothing familiar he saw.
"I'm sorry, dear maid," he spoke with a smile,
"have I met you before?"
"Many years past, when I was a girl,
I lived in a village nearby.
There was sun on the roof and cats in the den,
and rainbows half a world high.
"I was happy back then with my family around,
and friends, in my bright, simple home.
But Fate, as you know, is friend of all woe,
and wouldn't leave me alone.
"You see, one spring day, a man rode to town,
a figure I'd ne'er before seen.
And I knew by my God in Heaven above
that this was the only for me.
"He had hair to his shoulders a dark, curly brown,
and eyes the bright blue of the sea.
His smile was like sun on a grey, dreary day,
his laugh was a sprite's melody.
"He sat in the inn that my father did own,
and told stories and jokes all the day.
He tossed a few darts with the men in the pub,
and won every game that he played.
"And when night slowly fell, he took me by hand,
down the path where the river ran deep,
and sang me a song of love and delight
until satisfied finally I'd sleep.
"When I woke the next morn, my lover was gone,
but he'd made me a promise for life:
that one day soon he'd come back again
and marry, and make me his wife.
"He promised he loved me,"
she lovingly sighed,
her heart swelled so gladly,
she felt she could fly.
Sir Robyn remembered a spring some years past,
and a beautiful, raven-haired maid.
But he also remembered his wife back at home,
and the face of his newly-born babe.
He took her by hand as gently he said, "My dear,
that was past; we were young and foolhardy,
and a promise was made in the night by a boy
now a man with a wife and a baby."
"But you promised you loved me!"
she pleadingly cried.
her heart hurt so sharply,
she thought she would die.
He patted her hand in a fatherly manner,
"That's all in the past as I said,"
As the words slowly burned through her pain-ravaged mind,
she feared that she soon would be dead.
She ran through the hills to a castle nearby
where the wife longed her knight to return.
A knock on the door and opening swift
brought in the young maiden just spurned.
"With no one between," the maiden soft said,
"we'll never again be apart."
She grabbed up a knife from the wall near the door,
and stabbed the poor lass in the heart.
The knight entered home to this ghast, bloody scene
of the maid and his wife on the floor,
the former with tears still bright in her eyes,
the latter to breathe nevermore.
"I told you," said she, "you're the only for me,"
as the tears ran hard from her eyes.
"I've proved it -- you see, my sister is she
who dead on the floor by me lies.
"She wandered from home into the woods
when I was only a child.
We feared she'd been taken away by the gypsies,
or killed by an animal wild.
"But still I had hoped for her safe return,
prayed Heaven to hasten her home --"
She suddenly blanched as she gazed at the knife.
"Dear God, oh, what have I done?"
She plunged the knife deep into her own breast
before the knight could her stop.
Helpless, he stared as the blood stained her gown,
watched her down to the floor slowly drop.
"Your promise has killed me,"
she quietly sighed,
then, closing her eyes,
she silently died.
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