“Soon through the wood I had to pass,
“With hangmen by my side, alas!
“Down from the tree, with bitter scoff,
“The raven cried: ‘head-off! head-off!’”
In right merry chorus the spirits then laughed;
At length the musician in person stepp’d aft:
“I’ve sung my own song, friends, demurely,
“That charming song’s at an end;
“When the heart is once broken, why surely
“The song may homeward wend!”
Then began the wild laughter still louder to sound,
And the pale spectral troop in a circle swept round.
From the neighbouring church-tow’r the stroke of “One!” fell,
And the spirits rush’d back to their graves with a yell.
9.
I was asleep, and calmly slept,
All pain and grief allay’d;
A wondrous vision o’er me crept,
There came a lovely maid.
As pale as marble was her face,
And, O, so passing fair!
Her eyes they swam with pearl-like grace,
And strangely waved her hair.
And softly, softly moved her foot
The pale-as-marble maid;
And on my heart herself she put,
The pale-as-marble maid.
How shook and throbb’d, half sad, half blest,
My heart, which hotly burn’d!
But neither shook nor throbb’d her breast,
Which into ice seem’d turn’d.
“It neither shakes nor throbs, my breast,
“And it is icy cold;
“And yet I know love’s yearning blest,
“Love’s mighty pow’r of old.