"She does not love me?" Gwyllem cried. "It is well enough. I do not come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered. Listen, Saxon!" He caught up Richard's lute. The strings shrieked beneath Gwyllem's fingers as he fashioned his rude song.
"Love me or love me not, it is enough That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love,-- My life that was a scroll bescrawled and blurred With tavern-catches, which that pity of his Erased, and wrote instead one lonely word, O Branwen!
"I have accorded you incessant praise And song and service, dear, because of this; And always I have dreamed incessantly Who always dreamed, when in oncoming days This man or that shall love you, and at last This man or that shall win you, it must be That, loving him, you will have pity on me When happiness engenders memory And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past, O Branwen!
"Of this I know not surely, who am sure That I shall always love you while I live, And that, when I am dead, with naught to give Of song or service, Love will yet endure, And yet retain his last prerogative, When I lie still, and sleep out centuries, With dreams of you and the exceeding love I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof, And give God thanks for all, and so find peace, O Branwen!"
"Now, were I to get as tipsy as that," Richard enviously thought, midway in a return to his stolid sheep, "I would simply go to sleep and wake up with a headache. And were I to fall as many fathoms deep in love as this Gwyllem ventures, or, rather, as he hurls himself with a splurge, I would perform--I wonder, now, what miracle?"
For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so young, so earnest over every trifle, and above all, was so untroubled by forethought: each least desire controlled him, as varying winds sport with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the boy appeared to emulate. Richard saw that in a fashion Gwyllem was superb. "And heigho!" said Richard, "I am attestedly a greater fool than he, but I begin to weary of a folly so thin-blooded."
The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. He declared himself a tinker. He chatted out an hour with Richard, who perfectly recognized him as Sir Walter Blount; and then this tinker crossed over into England.