Yet a breath can still those words awaken,
Though to other shores far hence they woo:
Come away!
In the light leaves, in the reed’s faint sighing,
In the low, sweet sounds of early spring,
Still their music wanders—till the dying
Hears them pass, as on a spirit’s wing:
Come away!
FAIR HELEN OF KIRKCONNEL.
[“Fair Helen of Kirkconnel,” as she is called in the Scottish Minstrelsy, throwing herself between her betrothed lover and a rival by whom his life was assailed, received a mortal wound, and died in the arms of the former.]