Now watching Robert's troop who cannot wait,
fat Ranulet calls forward men with poles
who put them through the stocks in rough-cut holes
to carry from the courtyard through the gate
stocks and the pris'ner, once they're all unchained
from heavy posts around them, deeply set.
Tall tales of torture caused to weep and fret
the folk that these militiamen constrained.
Thus Giles was brought before the nervous crowd,
the courtyard being insufficient sized,
while Ranulet scoffed apples (which he prized),
and yet for others these were not allowed.
He held his pincers glinting in the light,
while Robert's horsemen vanished out of sight.

"Columba!" cried King Giles, who fled his chains,
now wild and lithe and terrible to see,
his face with paint contorted into glee,
Jack-in-the-box with calm and cunning brains.
With acrobatic poise he seized the Sage
and wrapped his former bonds around his neck,
thus making Ranulet a writhing wreck,
collapsing down in mounds of lard and age.
"I am King Giles!" he cried, "and so you men
made a militia all against your will,
I shall now pardon, if you've had your fill
of Robert's service. Let us take his den,
then we'll defend it 'gainst his puny few,
and do as honest men should ever do."

The hillside bristled; many clenched their hands
on deadly weapons. Men looked all around
to see which side could hope to stand their ground,
and wondered how to form opposing bands.
But then a sudden hush fell o'er the scene
as silent archers stood before the King;
they seemed to come from nowhere, glistening,
and bowed before the stocks in robes of green.
"King Giles, all hail! Anointed by the Lord
to rule o'er Sunderland by royal right,
we come to lend assistance in the fight
against the unseen folk of Robert's horde."
So spake the Forest King, for it was he;
and Giles could only nod, and glad agree.

With that the archers marched through farm and field,
as though they spent their days there all the time,
but somehow hid their angel-face sublime
behind a pretty vision each could wield.
The crowd were speechless - weapons dropped from hands;
and then an aging maid cried, "Hail the King!"
"Hail Giles!" the castle walls resound and sing;
and so the jester rescued Lionel's lands.
"Look yonder," said the fairy. "See the towers."
Then Giles beheld on each of them a child
whose faces long familiar flashed and smiled
their laughter through the seasons by their powers.
"She comes!" proclaimed the Fay; then Giles conceived
through apples would the children be relieved.

Released from Robert's dungeons, men cried out
to hail the summer sun they'd longed to see;
at last both they and family were free,
for hostage-taking shackled all in doubt.
Over the fields a light on shadows shines,
revealing darkness where it tries to hide;
right through the kingdom's meadows archers glide,
exposing all its grim and dark designs.
For once men turned their backs on fatal fear,
all heaven's vagrants had no place to stay,
and perished there that mad mid-summer's day
piled high in heaps, a harvest time most queer.
Where Robert made men quail through force and hate,
now falls the unseen denizens' estate.