LADY.
As I suppose, by way of recompense,
For quenching thirst on some hot summer day.
WALTER.
Memories grow around it thick as flow
That well is loved and haunted by a star.
The live-long day her clear and patient eye
Is open on the soft and bending blue,
Just where she lost her lover in the morn.
But with the night the star creeps o'er the trees
And smiles upon her, and some happy hours
She holds his image in her crystal heart.
Beside that well I read the mighty Bard
Who clad himself with beauty, genius, wealth,
Then flung himself on his own passion-pyre
And was consumed. Beside that lucid well
The whitest lilies grow for many miles.
'Tis said that, 'mong the flowers of perished years,
A prince woo'd here a lady of the land,
And when with faltering lips he told his love,
Into her proud face leapt her prouder blood;
She struck him blind with scorn, then with an air
As if she wore the crowns of all the world,
She swept right on and left him in the dew.
Again he sat at even with his love,
He sent a song into her haughty ears
To plead for him;—she listened, still he sang.
Tears, drawn by music, were upon her face,
Till on its trembling close, to which she clung
Like dying wretch to life, with a low cry
She flung her arms around him, told her love,
And how she long had loved him, but had kept
It in her heart, like one who has a gem
And hoards it up in some most secret place,
While he who owns it seeks it and with tears.
Won by the sweet omnipotence of song!
He gave her lands! she paid him with herself.
Brow-bound with gold she sat, the fairest thing
Within his sea-washed shores.
LADY.
Most fit reward!
A poet's love should ever thus be paid.
WALTER.
Ha! Dost thou think so?
LADY.
Yes. The tale! the tale!