Silently, with lips compressed,
Pale hands clasped above her breast,
Stately brow of anguish high,
Deathlike cheek, but dauntless eye;
Silently, o'er that red plain,
Moved the lady 'midst the slain.
Sometimes it seemed as a charging cry,
Or the ringing tramp of a steed came nigh;
Sometimes a blast of the Paynim horn,
Sudden and shrill from the mountains borne ;
And her maidens trembled ;-but on her ear
No meaning fell with those sounds of fear;
They had less of mastery to shake her now,
Than the quivering, erewhile, of an aspen-bough.
She searched into many an unclosed eye,
That looked, without soul, to the starry sky;
She bowed down o'er many a shattered breast,
She lifted up helmet and cloven crest—
Not there, not there he lay!
"Lead where the most hath been dared and done,
Where the heart of the battle hath bled-lead on!"
And the vassal took the way.
He turned to a dark and lonely tree
That waved o'er a fountain red;
Oh! swiftest there had the currents free
From noble veins been shed.
Thickest there the spear-heads gleamed,
And the scattered plumage streamed,
And the broken shields were tossed,
And the shivered lances crossed,
And the mail-clad sleepers round
Made the harvest of that ground.
He was there! the leader amidst his band
Where the faithful had made their last vain stand;
He was there! but affection's glance alone
The darkly-changed in that hour had known;
With the falchion yet in his cold hand grasped,
And a banner of France to his bosom clasped,
And the form that of conflict bore fearful trace,
And the face-oh! speak not of that dead face!
As it lay to answer love's look no more,
Yet never so proudly loved before !
She quelled in her soul the deep floods of woe,
The time was not yet for their waves to flow;
She felt the full presence, the might of death,
Yet there came no sob with her struggling breath,
"He was there! the leader amidst his band,
Where the faithful had made their last vain stand;"
And a proud smile shone o'er her pale despair,
As she turned to his follower-" Your lord is there!
Look on him! know him by scarf and crest!--
Bear him away with his sires to rest!"
Another day, another night,
And the sailor on the deep
Hears the low chant of a funeral rite
From the lordly chapel sweep.
It comes with a broken and muffled tone,
As if that rite were in terror done:
Yet the song 'midst the seas hath a thrilling power, And he knows 'tis a chieftain's burial hour.
Hurriedly, in fear and woe,
Through the aisle the mourners go;
With a hushed and stealthy tread,
Bearing on the noble dead;
Sheathed in armor of the field-
Only his wan face revealed,
Whence the still and solemn gleam
Doth a strange sad contrast seem
To the anxious eyes of that pale band,
With torches wavering in every hand,
For they dread each moment the shout of war,
And the burst of the Moslem cimeter.
There is no plumed head o'er the bier to bend,
No brother of battle, no princely friend:
No sound comes back like the sounds of yore,
Unto sweeping swords from the marble floor;
By the red fountain the valiant lie,
The flower of Provençal chivalry;
But one free step, and one lofty heart,
Bear through that scene to the last their part.
She hath led the death-train of the brave
To the verge of his own ancestral grave;
She hath held o'er her spirit long rigid sway,
But the struggling passion must now have way;
In the cheek, half seen through her mourning veil,
By turns does the swift blood flush and fail;
The pride on the lip is lingering still,
But it shakes as a flame to the blast might thrill;
Anguish and triumph are met at strife,
Rending the cords of her frail young life;
And she sinks at last on her warrior's bier,
Lifting her voice, as if death might hear.
"I have won thy fame from the breath of wrong,
My soul hath risen for thy glory strong!
Now call me hence, by thy side to be,
The world thou leavest has no place for me.
The light goes with thee, the joy, the worth—
Faithful and tender! Oh! call me forth!
Give me my home on thy noble heart,-
Well have we loved, let us both depart!
And pale on the breast of the dead she lay,
The living cheek to the cheek of clay;
The living cheek!-Oh! it was not vain,
That strife of the spirit to rend its chain;
She is there at rest in her place of pride,
In death how queen-like-a glorious bride!
Joy for the freed one !-she might not stay
When the crown had fallen from her life away;
She might not linger-a weary thing,
A dove with no home for its broken wing,
Thrown on the harshness of alien skies
That know not its own land's melodies.
From the long heart-withering early gone;
She hath lived-she hath loved-her task is done'!
THE CORONATION OF INEZ DE CASTRO.
"Tableau, où l'Amour fait alliance avec la Tombe; union redoutable de la mort et de la vie !" -MADAME DE STAEL.
THERE was music on the midnight:
From a royal fane it rolled,
And a mighty bell, each pause between,
Sternly and slowly tolled.
Strange was their mingling in the sky,
It hushed the listener's breath;
For the music spoke of triumph high,
The lonely bell, of death.
There was hurrying through the mid-
night
A sound of many feet;
But they fell with a muffled fearfulness
Along the shadowy street :
And softer, fainter, grew their tread,
As it neared the minster gate,
Whence a broad and solemn light was
shed
From a scene of royal state.
Fuil glowed the strong red radiance
In the centre of the nave,
Where the folds of a purple canopy
Swept down in many a wave;
Loading the marble pavement old
With a weight of gorgeous gloom,
For something lay 'midst their fretted
gold,
Like a shadow of the tomb.
And within that rich pavilion,
High on a glittering throne,
A woman's form sat silently
'Midst the glare of light alone.
Her jewelled robes fell strangely still—
The drapery on her breast
Seemed with no pulse beneath to thrill,
So stonelike was its rest!
|