Dark house and window desolate!
Where is the sun which shone so fair?
'Twas here we danced and laughed at fate:
Now the stones weep; I see them there.
They weep, and feel a grievous chill:
Dark house and widowed window-sill!
And what can be more piteous than this prayer? (p. 809):—
Love, if you love me, delve a tomb,
And lay me there the earth beneath;
After a year, come see my bones,
And make them dice to play therewith.
But when you're tired of that game,
Then throw those dice into the flame;
But when you're tired of gaming free,
Then throw those dice into the sea.
The simpler expression of sorrow to the death is, as usual, more impressive. A girl speaks thus within sight of the grave (p. 808):—
Yes, I shall die: what wilt thou gain?
The cross before my bier will go;
And thou wilt hear the bells complain,
The Misereres loud and low.
Midmost the church thou'lt see me lie
With folded hands and frozen eye;
Then say at last, I do repent!—
Nought else remains when fires are spent.
Here is a rustic Oenone (p. 307):—
Fell death, that fliest fraught with woe!
Thy gloomy snares the world ensphere:
Where no man calls, thou lov'st to go;
But when we call, thou wilt not hear.
Fell death, false death of treachery,
Thou makest all content but me.
Another is less reproachful, but scarcely less sad (p. 308):—
Strew me with blossoms when I die,
Nor lay me 'neath the earth below;
Beyond those walls, there let me lie,
Where oftentimes we used to go.
There lay me to the wind and rain;
Dying for you, I feel no pain:
There lay me to the sun above;
Dying for you, I die of love.
Yet another of these pitiful love-wailings displays much poetry of expression (p. 271):—