Page:The Story and Song of Black Roderick.djvu/13

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He gave scant greeting to the throng, He waved the guests aside: ‘Now haste! for I, Earl Roderick, Will wait long for no bride!

‘And I must in the saddle be   Before the night is gray; So quickly with the marriage lines, And let us ride away.’

And now shall I tell thee how, as he spoke thus proud and heartlessly, his little bride came into the hall? So white was she, and so trembled she, that many wondered she did not sink upon the marble floor and die.

Her mother held her snow-white hand, weeping bitterly the while.

‘If I had my will,’ thought she, ‘this thing should never be. Oh, sharp sorrow,’ sobbed she, ‘this for a woman: my trouble thou art, and my thousand treasures.’

Her father, seeing the frowning Earl, muttered in his beard:

‘Would there were some other way. Stern is he and hard, to wear a young maid's