Page:Rosalind and Helen (Shelley, Forman).djvu/18

16 Wake in this dell when day-light fails, And grey shades gather in the woods: And the owls have all fled far away In a merrier glen to hoot and play, For the moon is veiled and sleeping now. The accustomed nightingale still broods On her accustomed bough, But she is mute; for her false mate Has fled and left her desolate.

This silent spot tradition old Had peopled with the spectral dead. For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told That a hellish shape at midnight led The ghost of a youth with hoary hair, And sate on the seat beside him there, Till a naked child came wandering by, When the fiend would change to a lady fair! A fearful tale! The truth was worse: For here a sister and a brother Had solemnized a monstrous curse, Meeting in this fair solitude: For beneath yon very sky, Had they resigned to one another Body and soul. The multitude, Tracking them to the secret wood, Tore limb from limb their innocent child, And stabbed and trampled on it's mother; But the youth, for God's most holy grace, A priest saved to burn in the market-place.

Duly at evening Helen came; To this lone silent spot, From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow