VI.
Why swims pale Mena’s heavy eye?
Why walks she with a falt’ring step?
Why heaves she now the sudden sigh?
Has not her gallant lover kept
His knightly word? or, can it be
That he has fall’n beyond the sea?
She had last night a fearful dream,
‘A spirit woke her,’ (it did seem,)
‘And with a finger gory red,
Pointed her to a bleeding head;
Upon a city’s gate ’twas plac’d,
With dust and clotted gore defac’d;’
She shriek’d not—but her heart’s hot blood
Mounted in gushes to her brain,
This cannot be—oh, gracious God!
Is this her luckless lover slain?
But the foul spirit by his power,
Sustain’d her through her trying hour.
Yet once again
The vision came.
‘She sees a gallant knight,
And a ladye fair flit by;
They move like forms of light,
And stately onward hie;
The knight—he was the baron bold!
Herself the ladye fair!
The hour of one the clock now told,
The spirits melt in air.’