| ON Rudborne bank two pining maidens sat, | |
| Their tears fast dripping to the water clear; | |
| Each one lamenting for her absent mate, | |
| Who at Saint Alban’s shook the murdering spear. | |
| The nut-brown Elinoure to Juga fair | 5 |
| Did speak acroole, with languishment of eyne, | |
| Like drops of pearly dew, glistened the quivering brine. | |
| |
| Elin. | O gentle Juga! hear my sad complaint, | |
| To fight for York, my love is dight in steel; | |
| O may no sanguine stain the white rose paint, | 10 |
| May good Saint Cuthbert watch Sir Robert wele; | |
| Much more than death in phantasy I feel; | |
| See, see! upon the ground he bleeding lies; | |
| Infuse some juice of life, or else my dear love dies. | |
| |
| Juga. | Sisters in sorrow, on this daisied bank, | 15 |
| Where melancholy broods, we will lament, | |
| Be wet with morning dew and even dank; | |
| Like levin’d oaks in each the other bent, | |
| Or like forsaken halls of merriment, | |
| Whose ghastly ruins hold the train of fright, | 20 |
| Where deadly ravens bark, and owlets wake the night. | |
| |
| Elin. | No more the bagpipe shall awake the morn, | |
| The minstrel-dance, good cheer, and morris-play; | |
| No more the ambling palfrey and the horn | |
| Shall from the lessel rouse the fox away. | 25 |
| I’ll seek the forest all the livelong day; | |
| All night among the graved churchyard will go, | |
| And to the passing sprites relate my tale of woe. | |
| |
| Juga. | When murky clouds do hang upon the leme | |
| Of leden moon, in silver mantles dight; | 30 |
| The tripping fairies weave the golden dream | |
| Of happiness, which flieth with the night. | |
| Then (but the saints forbid!) if to a sprite | |
| Sir Richard’s form is lyped, I’ll hold distraught, | |
| His bleeding clay-cold corse, and die each day in thought. | 35 |
| |
| Elin. | Ah! woe-lamenting words! what words can shew? | |
| Thou glassy river, on thy bank may bleed | |
| Champions, whose blood will with thy waters flow, | |
| And Rudborne stream be Rudborne stream indeed! | |
| Haste, gentle Juga, trip it o’er the mead | 40 |
| To know, or whether we must wail again, | |
| Or with our fallen knights be mingled on the plain. | |
| |
| So saying, like two lightning-blasted trees, | |
| Or twain of clouds that holdeth stormy rain, | |
| They movèd gently o’er the dewy mees, | 45 |
| To where Saint Alban’s holy shrines remain. | |
| There did they find that both their knights were slain, | |
| Distraught, they wandered to swoll’n Rudborne’s side, | |
| Yellèd their deadly knell, sank in the waves, and died. | |
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