Hid was the bright heaven's loveliness Beneath a sudden cloud; As a bride might doff her bridal dress, To don her funeral shroud: And over flood, and over fell, With a wild and wicked shout, From the secret cell, where in chains they dwell, And the dark hills through, the thunder flew, And from peak to peak the lightning threw The boat went down ;-without delay The river was calm as the river could be, And the thrush was awake on the gladsome tree; And there he lay, in a sunny cave, On the margin of the tranquil wave, Half deaf with that infernal din, And wet, poor fellow, to the skin. He looked to the left, and he looked to the right: Why hastened he not, the noble knight, To dry his aged nurse's tears, To calm the hoary butler's fears; To listen to the prudent speeches Of half a dozen loquacious leeches; And change his dripping cloak directly? A maiden lay in her loveliness; A shelf of the rock was all her bed; Shrouded her form in its silent rest; About her lay like a thin robe there: How very sound the maiden slept ! Fearful and faint the young knight sighed ;— The echoes of the cave replied. He leaned to look upon her face; He clasped her hand in a wild embrace; Never was form of such fine mould; But the hands and the face were as white and cold, As they of the Parian stone were made, To which, in great Minerva's shade, The Athenian sculptor's toilsome knife On her fair neck there seemed no stain, Where the pure blood coursed through the delicate vein; And her breath-if breath indeed it were,— Flowed in a current so soft and rare, It would scarcely have stirred the young moth's wing, On the path of his noonday wandering : Never on earth a creature trod, Half so lovely, or half so odd. Count Otto stares till his eyelids ache, Is she a nymph of another sphere? Whence came she hither?-what doth she here? Or if the morning of her birth Be registered on this our earth, Why hath she fled from her father's halls? And where hath she left her cloaks and shawls? There was no time for reason's lectures, And the lady was scarcely five stone weight; He stopped, in less than half an hour, With his beauteous burthen, at Belmont Tower. Gay, I ween, was the chamber drest, As the Count gave order, for his guest; But scarcely on the couch, 't is said, When she opened at once her great blue eyes, Ere she had spoken, and ere she had heard, She laughed so long, and laughed so loud, A dirge is a merrier thing by half Seemed shouting in mirthful concert too; As soon as that droll tumult passed, And talked and talked with all its might. 'T was full of those clear tones that start Ere passion and sin disturb the well, To the babbling waves of a limpid stream; For the words of her speech, if words they might be, And when she had said them o'er and o'er, Than you or I of the slang that falls Or metaphysics from a Blue. Count Otto swore,-Count Otto's reading To make her happy in her chains. |