Slow and weary, moves a dreary
Stout black bark the stream along;
Visors wearing, all-uncaring,
Funeral mutes the benches throng.
’Mongst them dumbly, with his comely
Face upturn’d, the dead bard lies;
Living seeming, toward the beaming
Light of heaven still turn his eyes.
From the water, like a daughter
Of the stream’s voice, comes a sigh,
And with wailing unavailing
’Gainst the bark the waves dash high.
4. THE EXORCISM.
The young Franciscan friar sits
In his cloister silent and lonely;
He reads a magical book, which speaks
Of exorcisms only.
And when the hour of midnight knell’d,
An impulse resistless came o’er him;
The underground spirits with pallid lips
He summon’d to rise up before him:
“Ye spirits! Go, fetch me from out of the grave
The corpse of my mistress cherish’d;
For this one night restore her to life,
Rekindling joys long perish’d.”
The fearful exorcising word
He breathes, and his wish is granted;
The poor dead beauty in grave-clothes white
Appears to his vision enchanted.
Her look is mournful; her ice-cold breast
Her sighs of grief cannot smother;
The dead one sits herself down by the monk,
In silence they gaze on each other.