And every night she placed a light
In the high rock's lonely tower,
To guide her lover to the land,
Should the murky tempest lower.
But now despair had seized her breast,
And sunken in her eye;
"Oh tell me but if Bertrand live,
And I in peace will die."
She wander'd o'er the lonely shore,
The curlew scream'd above,
She heard the scream with a sickening heart,
Much boding on her love.
Yet still she kept her lonely way,
And this was all her cry.
"Oh! tell me but if Bertrand live,
And I in peace shall die."
And now she came to a horrible rift
All in the rock's hard side,
A bleak and blasted oak o'erspread
The cavern yawning wide.
And pendant from its dismal top
The deadly nightshade hung;
The hemlock and the aconite
Across the mouth was flung.
And all within was dark and drear,
And all without was calm;
Yet Gondoline enter'd, her soul upheld
By some deep-working charm.
And as she enter'd the cavern wide,
The moonbeam gleamed pale,
And she saw a snake on the craggy rock,
It clung by its slimy tail.
Her foot it slipp'd, and she stood aghast,
She trod on a bloated toad;
Yet, still upheld by the secret charm,
She kept upon her road.
And now upon her frozen ear
Mysterious sounds arose;
So, on the mountain's piny top
The blustering north wind blows.