Once, when my husband was a child, there came <br />To his father's table, one who called him kin, <br />In sunbleached corduroys paler than his skin. <br />His look was grave and kind; he bore the name <br />Of the dead singer of Senlac, and his smile. <br />Shyly and courteously he smiled and spoke; <br />"I've been in the laurel since the winter broke; <br />Four months, I reckon; yes, sir, quite a while." <br /> <br />He'd killed a score of foemen in the past, <br />In some blood feud, a dark and monstrous thing; <br />To him it seemed his duty. At the last <br />His enemies found him by a forest spring, <br />Which, as he died, lay bright beneath his head, <br />A silver shield that slowly turned to red.<br /><br />Elinor Morton Wylie<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/blood-feud/
