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startest thou back from that fount of sweet water? The roses are drooping while waiting for thee; ‘Ladye, 'tis dark with the red hue of slaughter, There is blood on that fountain—oh! whose may it be?’

Uprose the ladye at once from her dreaming, Dreams born of sighs from the violets round, The jasmine bough caught in her bright tresses, seeming In pity to keep the fair prisoner it bound;

Tear-like the white leaves fell round her, as, breaking The branch in her haste, to the fountain she flew, The wave and the flowers o'er its mirror were reeking, Pale, as the marble around it, she grew.

She followed its track to the grove of the willow, To the bower of the twilight it led her at last, There lay the bosom so often her pillow, But the dagger was in it, its beating was past.