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The Damozels
LADY ALICE, Lady Louise, | |
| Between the wash of the tumbling seas | |
| We are ready to sing, if so ye please: | |
| So lay your long hands on the keys; | |
| Sing “Laudate pueri.” | 5 |
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| And ever the great bell overhead | |
| Boom’d in the wind a knell for the dead, | |
| Though no one toll’d it, a knell for the dead. | |
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Lady Louise
Sister, let the measure swell | |
| Not too loud; for you sing not well | 10 |
| If you drown the faint boom of the bell; | |
| He is weary, so am I. | |
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| And ever the chevron overhead | |
| Flapp’d on the banner of the dead; | |
| (Was he asleep, or was he dead?) | 15 |
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Lady Alice
Alice the Queen, and Louise the Queen, | |
| Two damozels wearing purple and green, | |
| Four lone ladies dwelling here | |
| From day to day and year to year: | |
| And there is none to let us go; | 20 |
| To break the locks of the doors below, | |
| Or shovel away the heap’d-up snow; | |
| And when we die no man will know | |
| That we are dead; but they give us leave, | |
| Once every year on Christmas-eve, | 25 |
| To sing in the Closet Blue one song: | |
| And we should be so long, so long, | |
| If we dar’d, in singing; for, dream on dream, | |
| They float on in a happy stream; | |
| Float from the gold strings, float from the keys, | 30 |
| Float from the open’d lips of Louise: | |
| But, alas! the sea-salt oozes through | |
| The chinks of the tiles of the Closet Blue; | |
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| And ever the great bell overhead | |
| Booms in the wind a knell for the dead, | 35 |
| The wind plays on it a knell for the dead. | |
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(They sing all together:)
How long ago was it, how long ago, | |
| He came to this tower with hands full of snow? | |
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| “Kneel down, O love Louise, kneel down,” he said, | 40 |
| And sprinkled the dusty snow over my head. | |
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| He watch’d the snow melting, it ran through my hair, | |
| Ran over my shoulders, white shoulders and bare. | |
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| “I cannot weep for thee, poor love Louise, | |
| For my tears are all hidden deep under the seas; | 45 |
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| “In a gold and blue casket she keeps all my tears, | |
| But my eyes are no longer blue, as in old years; | |
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| “Yea, they grow gray with time, grow small and dry, | |
| I am so feeble now, would I might die.” | |
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| And in truth the great bell overhead | 50 |
| Left off his pealing for the dead, | |
| Perchance because the wind was dead. | |
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| Will he come back again, or is he dead? | |
| O! is he sleeping, my scarf round his head? | |
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| Or did they strangle him as he lay there, | 55 |
| With the long scarlet scarf I used to wear? | |
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| Only I pray thee, Lord, let him come here! | |
| Both his soul and his body to me are most dear. | |
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| Dear Lord, that loves me, I wait to receive | |
| Either body or spirit this wild Christmas-eve. | 60 |
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| Through the floor shot up a lily red, | |
| With a patch of earth from the land of the dead, | |
| For he was strong in the land of the dead. | |
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| What matter that his cheeks were pale, | |
| His kind kiss’d lips all gray? | 65 |
| “O, love Louise, have you waited long?” | |
| “O, my lord Arthur, yea.” | |
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| What if his hair that brush’d her cheek | |
| was stiff with frozen rime? | |
| His eyes were grown quite blue again, | 70 |
| As in the happy time. | |
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| “O, love Louise, this is the key | |
| Of the happy golden land! | |
| O, sisters, cross the bridge with me, | |
| My eyes are full of sand. | 75 |
| What matter that I cannot see, | |
| If ye take me by the hand?” | |
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| And ever the great bell overhead | |
| And the tumbling seas mourn’d for the dead; | |
| For their song ceased, and they were dead. | 80 |
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