| |
| OH, happy, happy maid, | |
| In the year of war and death | |
| She wears no sorrow! | |
| By her face so young and fair, | |
| By the happy wreath | 5 |
| That rules her happy hair, | |
| She might be a bride to-morrow! | |
| She sits and sings within her moonlit bower, | |
| Her moonlit bower in rosy June, | |
| Yet ah, her bridal breath, | 10 |
| Like fragrance from some sweet night-blowing flower, | |
| Moves from her moving lips in many a mournful tune! | |
| She sings no song of love’s despair, | |
| She sings no lover lowly laid, | |
| No fond peculiar grief | 15 |
| Has ever touched or bud or leaf | |
| Of her unblighted spring. | |
| She sings because she needs must sing; | |
| She sings the sorrow of the air | |
| Whereof her voice is made. | 20 |
| That night in Britain howsoe’er | |
| On any chords the fingers stray’d | |
| They gave the notes of care. | |
| Long since in some pale shade | |
| Of some far twilight told, | 25 |
| She knows not when or where, | |
| She sings, with trembling hand on trembling lute-strings laid:— | |
| |
| The murmur of the mourning ghost | |
| That keeps the shadowy kine | |
| “Oh, Keith of Ravelston, | 30 |
| The sorrows of thy line!” | |
| |
| Ravelston, Ravelston, | |
| The merry path that leads | |
| Down the golden morning hill, | |
| And thro’ the silver meads; | 35 |
| |
| Ravelston, Ravelston, | |
| The stile beneath the tree, | |
| The maid that kept her mother’s kine, | |
| The song that sang she! | |
| |
| She sang her song, she kept her kine, | 40 |
| She sat beneath the thorn | |
| When Andrew Keith of Ravelston | |
| Rode thro’ the Monday morn; | |
| |
| His henchmen sing, his hawk-bells ring, | |
| His belted jewels shine! | 45 |
| Oh, Keith of Ravelston, | |
| The sorrows of thy line! | |
| |
| Year after year, where Andrew came, | |
| Comes evening down the glade, | |
| And still there sits a moonshine ghost | 50 |
| Where sat the sunshine maid. | |
| |
| Her misty hair is faint and fair, | |
| She keeps the shadowy kine; | |
| Oh, Keith of Ravelston, | |
| The sorrows of thy line! | 55 |
| |
| I lay my hand upon the stile, | |
| The stile is lone and cold, | |
| The burnie that goes babbling by | |
| Says nought that can be told. | |
| |
| Yet, stranger! here, from year to year, | 60 |
| She keeps her shadowy kine; | |
| Oh, Keith of Ravelston, | |
| The sorrows of thy line! | |
| |
| Step out three steps, where Andrew stood— | |
| Why blanch thy cheeks for fear? | 65 |
| The ancient stile is not alone, | |
| ’T is not the burn I hear! | |
| |
| She makes her immemorial moan, | |
| She keeps her shadowy kine; | |
| Oh, Keith of Ravelston, | 70 |
| The sorrows of thy line! | |
| |
