Or wander lone, where, wildering and wide, Trace once again old Trent's romantic shore, MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. GONDOLINE; A BALLAD. THE night it was still, and the moon it shone And the waves at the foot of the rifted rock When Gondoline roam'd along the shore, Though love had made bleak the rose on her cheek, And turned it to deadly white. Her thoughts they were drear, and the silent tear It fill'd her faint blue eye, As oft she heard, in Fancy's ear, Her Bertrand's dying sigh. Her Bertrand was the bravest youth And he was gone to the Holy Land And many a month had pass'd away, But nothing the maid from Palestine Could of her lover hear. Full oft she vainly tried to pierce Full oft she thought her lover's bark And every night she placed a light But now despair had seized her breast, And sunken in her eye; "Oh! tell me but if Bertrand live, And I in peace will die." She wander'd o'er the lonely shore, She heard the scream with a sickening heart Much boding of her love. Yet still she kept her lonely way, And this was all her cry, "Oh! tell me but if Bertrand live, And I in peace shall die." And now she came to a horrible rift, All in the rock's hard side, A bleak and blasted oak o'erspread And pendant from its dismal top Across the mouth were flung. And all within was dark and drear, Yet Gondoline entered, her soul upheld And as she enter'd the cavern wide, And she saw a snake on the craggy rock, Her foot it slipped, and she stood aghast, Yet, still upheld by the secret charm, And now upon her frozen ear So, on the mountain's piny top, Then furious peals of laughter loud Till they died away in soft decay, Yet still the maiden onward went, Though each big glaring ball of sight But now a pale blue light she saw, She stood appall'd; yet still the charm Yet each bent knee the other smote, And such a sight as she saw there, And such a sight as she saw there, A burning cauldron stood in the midst, And round about the cauldron stout Their waists were bound with living snakes, And their hair was stiff with blood. Their hands were gory too; and red |