Page:Graih my Chree by Hall Caine.pdf/2

310 “I will come to thee still, O love of my heart, From the arms of the envious sea; Though the tempest should swallow my choking breath, In the spite of hell and the devil and death I will come to thee, graih my chree.”

II.

“He will come no more to thine arms, my child, He is false or lost and dead, Now wherefore make ye these five years’ moan, And wherefore sit by the sea alone?” “He will keep his vow,” she said.

She climbed the brows of the cliffs at home, She gazed on the false, false sea. “It comes and it goes for ever,” she cried, “And tidings it brings to the wife and the bride, But never a word to me.”

Then, of lovers, another came wooing the maid, But she answered him nay and nay, The manfullest man and her servant true, “Give me thy hand and thou shalt not rue,” She murmured, “Alack, the day.”

Her father arose in his pride and his wrath, He was last of his race and name, “Because that a daughter will peak and will pine Must I never have child of my child to my line, But die in my childless shame?”

They bore her a bride to the kirkyard gate, It was a pitiful sight to see, Her body they decked in their jewels and gold, But the heart in her bosom sate silent and cold, And she murmured “Ah, woe is me.”