“Leave me, leave me, Don Ramiro!
Ah, thy breath is like a corpse’s!”
Once again the dark words speaks he
“At thy bidding have I come here!”
And the very ground seems glowing.
Fiddle, viol sound right merry;
Like a wondrous weft of magic
All within the hall is whirling.
“Leave me, leave me, Don Ramiro!”
Sadly sounds amidst the tumult;
Don Ramiro ever answers:
“At thy bidding have I come here!”
“In the name of God depart, then!”
Clara with a firm voice utters,
And the words she scarce had spoken
When Ramiro vanish’d from her.
Clara, death in every feature,
Chilly, night-surrounded, stood there,
And a swoon her lightsome figure
To its darksome kingdom carries.
But at last her misty slumber
Yields, at last her eyelids open,
But again, with deep amazement,
Would she fain have closed her fair eyes.
For since they began the dancing,
From her seat had she not moved once,
And she still sits by the bridegroom,
And the anxious knight thus asks her
“Say, why are thy cheeks so pallid?
Wherefore is thine eye so darksome?”—
“And Ramiro?”—stammers Clara,
And her tongue is mute with horror.
But with deep and solemn wrinkles
Is the bridegroom’s brow now furrow’d:
“Lady, bloody news why seek’st thou?
This day’s noontide died Ramiro.”