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| THERE was a sound of music sweet as gentle notes that swell | |
| At midnight from the moonlit caves of yonder leafy dell; | |
| Where, at the dewfall, spirits cluster round the sleeping flowers, | |
| To sing their plaintive melodies, and wreath their wild-rose bowers. | |
| There were gallant forms and beauteous ones around the altar press’d, | 5 |
| And dazzlingly the torches flash’d on plume and burnish’d crest; | |
| ’T was a scene whereon a painter’s eye or poet’s lip might dwell, | |
| When the young De Courcy wedded with the peerless Gabrielle. | |
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| He was a Knight a maid might love in days of wild romance, | |
| For braver never wielded brand or placed in rest the lance; | 10 |
| Free as the wind that o’er his mountain-castle wildly blew, | |
| Yet gentle as her gentle heart—and oh! as fervent too. | |
| And through that land of tale and song, she shone the fairest one, | |
| Where eyes are as its sparkling stars, and hearts are like its sun; | |
| And still the wandering troubadour full many a tale can tell | 15 |
| Of her the ever brightest gem—the peerless Gabrielle. | |
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| Upon the altar-stone, there knelt the maiden young and fair, | |
| Her blushes hid beneath a veil of flowing raven hair; | |
| And by her side the lofty one, whose knee, like his of yore, | |
| Had never bow’d save in the stirrup, and to God, before. | 20 |
| Oh! it is a touching sight when the lovely and the pure | |
| Come up to pledge their faith, through sin, through sorrow to endure; | |
| And never yet has man been bound within more potent spell, | |
| Than linger’d in the heart and smile of peerless Gabrielle. | |
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| But as they knelt before the shrine, came on a sound of fear— | 25 |
| Each warrior grasp’d his sabre as it met his startled ear; | |
| And through that quiet, holy place, the trumpet’s summons rang, | |
| The fearful burst of musquetry, and meeting sabres clang: | |
| In pour’d the savage mountain-clan like some enfranchised flood, | |
| And fierce the struggle ’twixt the brave and that stern band of blood; | 30 |
| For gallantly the warriors fought, and valiantly they fell | |
| Around the altar-stone where lay the dying Gabrielle. | |
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| A shot had pierced the gentle heart of that fair virgin-bride, | |
| She perish’d in her loveliness, in her young beauty’s pride; | |
| But where is he whose arm should guard, whose battle-blade defend, | 35 |
| The foremost in the raging fight, most eager to contend; | |
| Could he forsake that sweetest rose, amid the deadly strife, | |
| To purchase after hours of shame, to bear a hated life?— | |
| Whose hand is clasp’d with that of one in life beloved so well— | |
| De Courcy died a hero’s death beside his Gabrielle. | 40 |
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