The garland is gone that my locks shaded over,
But how it happen’d, I ne’er could discover;
Yet since that beauteous garland they stole,
My spirit has seem’d deprived of its soul.
The ghosts of the world, with looks dimly staring,
Gaze on me, and heaven seems barren and glaring,
A churchyard blue, its deities gone;
I roam in the forest, depress’d and alone.
From the forest have vanish’d the elves with their graces
Horns hear I, and yelping of dogs in their places;
While hid in the thicket, the trembling roe
Is licking her wounds with tearful woe.
And where are the mandrakes? Methinks they are biding
In clefts of the rocks, as a safe place of hiding;
My dear little friends, I’m returning again,
But reft of my garland and joy I remain.
O where is the fairy, with hair long and golden,
First beauty to whom I was ever beholden?
The oak-tree wherein her lifetime she pass’d
Stands mournfully stripp’d, and bared by the blast.
The waves of the streamlet run sad as the Styx’s;
Beside its lone banks sits one of the nixes,
As pale and as mute as a figure of stone,
While marks of deep grief o’er each feature are thrown.
I softly approach’d her with heartfelt compassion,—
She arose and gazed on me in singular fashion,
And then she fled with a terrified mien,
As if she some fearful spectre had seen.
SPANISH LYRICS.
’Twas on Hubert’s day—the year was
Thirteen hundred, three and eighty—
That the king a banquet gave us
In the castle at Segovia.
These state banquets just the same are
Everywhere, and at the tables
Of all princes sov’reign tedium
Yawns with uncontested vigour.