C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832)
The Maid of Neidpath
O
And lovers’ ears in hearing;
And love, in life’s extremity,
Can lend an hour of cheering.
Disease had been in Mary’s bower,
And slow decay from mourning,
Though now she sits in Neidpath’s tower
To watch her love’s returning.
Her form decayed by pining,
Till through her wasted hand, at night,
You saw the taper shining.
By fits a sultry hectic hue
Across her cheek was flying;
By fits so ashy pale she grew
Her maidens thought her dying.
Seemed in her frame residing:
Before the watch-dog pricked his ear
She heard her lover’s riding;
Ere scarce a distant form was kenned
She knew and waved to greet him,
And o’er the battlement did bend
As on the wing to meet him.
As o’er some stranger glancing;
Her welcome, spoke in faltering phrase,
Lost in his courser’s prancing.—
The castle arch, whose hollow tone
Returns each whisper spoken,
Could scarcely catch the feeble moan
Which told her heart was broken.