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King Witlaf’s Drinking-Horn · Ririro.com - Poetry

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  Speaker 1: King Whitloff's drinking horn. Whitloff, a king of the Saxons,
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  Speaker 1: ere yet his last he breathed to the merry monks
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  Speaker 1: of Croyland. His drinking horn bequeathed that whenever they sat
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  Speaker 1: at their revels and drank from the golden bowl, they
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  Speaker 1: might remember the donor and breathe a prayer for his soul.
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  Speaker 1: So sat they once at Christmas, and bade the goblet
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  Speaker 1: pass in their beards. The red wine glistened like dewdrops
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  Speaker 1: in the grass. They drank to the soul of Whitloff.
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  Speaker 1: They drank to Christ the Lord, and to each of
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  Speaker 1: the twelve apostles who had preached his Holy Word. They
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  Speaker 1: drank to the saints and martyrs of the dismal days
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  Speaker 1: of yore. And as soon as the horn was empty,
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  Speaker 1: they remembered one saint more, and the reader droned from
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  Speaker 1: the pulpit like the murmur of many bees. The legend
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  Speaker 1: of good Saint Guthlac and Saint Basil's homilies till the
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  Speaker 1: great bells of the convent. From their prison in the tower,
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  Speaker 1: Guthlac and bartholomais proclaimed the midnight hour and the yule
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  Speaker 1: log cracked in the chimney, and the abbot bowed his head,
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  Speaker 1: and the flamelets flapped and flickered. But the abbot was
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  Speaker 1: stark and dead. Yet still in his pallid fingers he
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  Speaker 1: clutched the golden bowl, in which, like a pearl dissolving,
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  Speaker 1: had sunk and dissolved his soul. But not for this
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  Speaker 1: their revels the jovial monks forbore, For they cried, fill
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  Speaker 1: high the goblet, we must drink to one Saint mar