SAINT

This Blatant Beast was finally overcome

And in no secret tourney: wit and fashion

Flocked out and for compassion

Wept as the Red Cross Knight pushed the blade home.

The people danced and sang the paeans due,

Roasting whole oxen on the public spit;

Twelve mountain peaks were lit

With bonfires; yet their hearts were doubt and rue.

Therefore no grave was deep enough to hold

The Beast, who after days came thrusting out,

Wormy from rump to snout,

His yellow cere-cloth patched with the grave's mould.

Nor could sea hold him: anchored with huge rocks,

He swelled and buoyed them up, paddling ashore

As evident as before

With deep-sea ooze and salty creaking bones.

Lime could not burn him, nor the sulphur fire:

So often as the good Knight bound him there,

With stink of singeing hair

And scorching flesh the corpse rolled from the pyre.

In the city-gutter would the Beast lie

Praising the Knight for all his valorous deeds:

'Ay, on those water-meads

He slew even me. These death-wounds testify.'

The Knight governed that city, a man shamed

And shrunken: for the Beast was over-dead,

With wounds no longer red

But gangrenous and loathsome and inflamed.

Not all the righteous judgements he could utter,

Nor mild laws frame, nor public works repair,

Nor wars wage, in despair,

Could bury that same Beast, crouched in the gutter.

A fresh remembrance-banquet to forestall,

The Knight turned hermit, went without farewell

To a far mountain-cell;

But the Beast followed as his seneschal,

And there drew water for him and hewed wood

With vacant howling laughter; else all day

Noisome with long decay

Sunning himself at the cave's entry stood.

Would bawl to pilgrims for a dole of bread

To feed the sick saint who once vanquished him

With spear so stark and grim;

Would set a pillow of grass beneath his head,

Would fetch him fever-wort from the pool's brim--

And crept into his grave when he was dead.

[From Ten Poems More as ‘The Beast’ (1930)]