This was the song he sang for her—for her this song he sang.
So there by the pool where the rose leaves drift.
She waited knowing the dawn was near,
And when she saw the shadows lift
And all the skies turn deep and clear,
She fled to her room—he had not come.
They dared not speak to her of him,
Her mother, her sister—aye, any of them.
For her face was carven out of stone
And her little lips made moan, made moan.
Yet late that night when the house was still
She heard a horse ride over the hill.
"It is he, it is he," her heart sang sweet.
Then out of the window climbed to meet
The lover who made her hot heart beat.
Yes there he was with his handsome head,
And now the same dear things he said
As he drew close with a sweep of his arm.
The gods of the gallows need no rest—
They ride like chieftains twelve abreast.
One flower touched as she fluttered by,
Swung on its stem,
And one bright star in the purple sky
Shone over them.
And what he said, it matters not,
Nor what she said to him.
And he stopped to listen like one who is stirred;
His horse even hearkened, as though he heard.
For down the road there came abreast
Twelve men in ancient armor dressed.
There was something strange in the way they rode;
There was something odd in their manners.
They did not see the lovers there,
Nor heed the house at all,
But they rode like mad their horses backs....
Rode through the solid wall.
When she had opened her frightened eyes
What was her pitiful heart's surprise
To find him gone
And the yellow dawn
A roaring flame in the new day's skies.
And now they have vanished leaving hope,
And a thing that hangs at the end of a rope.
They found her there
In a little heap
As though she had walked
In her lilied sleep.
And they never knew,
Though her mother said:
"It's a pity, so,
With her lover dead
On the gallows' tree
Three days ago...."
Chapter LX
"Why do you weep?" asked Gud, "since most of these dead ones will go to Hell anyway."
The man did not answer but kept on weeping. So Gud paused to read the epitaph on the tombstone of the grave on which the man was sitting. The inscription was: "IN THIS GRAVE LIE THE DAMNED SOULS OF UNBAPTIZED BABES."