And how she wept, and clasped his knees;

And how she tended him in vain—

And ever strove to expiate

The scorn that crazed his brain;—

And that she nursed him in a cave;

And how his madness went away,

When on the yellow forest-leaves

A dying man he lay;—

His dying words—but when I reached

That tenderest strain of all the ditty,