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(Excerpt)
IF ever thou shalt follow silver Seine | |
| Through his French vineyards and French villages, | |
| O, for the love of pity, turn aside | |
| At Vernier, and bear to linger there! | |
| The gentle river doth so,—lingering long | 5 |
| Round the dark moorland and the pool Grand’mer, | |
| And then with slower ripple steals away | |
| Down from his merry Paris. Do thou this; | |
| ’T is kind and piteous to bewail the dead,— | |
| The joyless, sunless dead; and these lie there, | 10 |
| Buried full fifty fathoms in the pool, | |
| Whose rough dark wave is closed above their grave, | |
| Like the black cover of an ancient book | |
| Over a tearful story. * * * * * “Come away,” she cries, | |
| “Thou knight, and take me from them all for thine. | 15 |
| Come, true-love, come.” The pebbles, water-washed, | |
| Grate with the gliding of the shallop’s keel, | |
Scarce bearing up those twain.
Frail boat, be strong! | |
| Three lives are thine to keep,—ah, lady pale, | |
| Choose of two lovers, for the other comes | 20 |
| With a wild bound that shakes the rotten plank. | |
| Moon! shine out fair for an avenging blow! | |
| She glitters on a quiet face and form | |
| That shuns it not, but stays the lifted death. | |
| “My brother Roland!” “Claude, dear brother mine!” | 25 |
| “I thought thee dead.” “I would that I had died | |
| Ere this had come.” “Nay, God! but she is thine!” | |
| “He wills her not for either: look, we fill, | |
| The current drifts us, and the oars are gone, | |
| I will leap forth.” “Now by the breast we sucked, | 30 |
| So shalt thou not: let the black waters break | |
| Over a broken heart.” “Nay, tell him no; | |
| Bid him save thee, Julie,—I will leap!” | |
| So strove they sinking, sinking,—Julie bending | |
| Between them; and those brothers over her | 35 |
| With knees and arms close locked for leave to die | |
| Each for the other; and the moon shone down, | |
| Silvering their far-off home, and the great wave | |
| That struck, and rose, and floated over them, | |
| Hushing their death-cries, hiding their kind strife, | 40 |
| Ending the earnest love of three great hearts | |
| With silence, and the splash of even waves. * * * * * | |
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