Who rideth through the driving rain
At such a headlong speed?
Naked and pale he rides amain,
Upon a naked steed.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Lay of the Brown Rosary.
Who meet there, my mother, at dawn and at even?
Who meet by that wall, never looking at heaven?
O sweetest my sister, what doeth with thee
The ghost of a nun with a brown rosary
And a face turned from heaven?
Browning, Robert. Mesmerism.
And the socket floats and flares,
And the house-beams groan
And a foot unknown
Is surmised on the garret stairs
And the locks slip unawares. . .
Buchanan, Robert. The Ballad of Judas Iscariot. (In Stedman's Victorian Anthology.)
The beauty is chiefly in the central idea of forgiveness, but the workmanship of this composition has also a very remarkable beauty, a Celtic beauty of weirdness, such as we seldom find in a modern composition touching religious tradition.—Lafcadio Hearn.
The body of Judas Iscariot
Lay stretched along the snow.
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Ran swiftly to and fro.
Carleton, William. Sir Turlough, or The Churchyard Bride. (In Stopford Brooke's A Treasury of Irish Poetry.)
The churchyard bride is accustomed to appear to the last mourner in the churchyard after a burial, and, changing its sex to suit the occasion, exacts a promise and a fatal kiss from the unfortunate lingerer.