Young Harrald sinks with many a sob and tear,
Down from the sky to nature’s lower sphere:
He rested long beneath the poplar tall,
Which grew up, under the red church’s wall.
Then, rising slow, he feebly stagger’d on,
Till his Minona’s bower he had won.
Trembling and sad he stood beside the door—
Pale as a spectre, and besprent with gore!
“Minona, come, ere Harrald’s youthful heart
Is burst by love and complicated smart.
Soon will his figure disappear from earth,
Yet we shall meet in heaven’s halls of mirth:
Minona, come and give me one embrace,
That I may instantly my path retrace.”
Thus warbles he in passion’s wildest note,
While death each moment rattles in his throat.
Minona came: “Almighty God!” she cried,
“My Harrald’s ghost has wander’d o’er the tide;
Red clots of blood his yellow tresses streak,
Drops of the same are running down his cheek.”
“Minona, love, survey me yet more near,
It is no shadow which accosts thee here;
Place thy warm hand upon my heart, and feel
Whether it beats for thee with slacken’d zeal.”
At once the current of her tears she stopp’d,
His arm upheld her, or the maid had dropp’d;
The roses faded from her face away,
And on her head the raven locks grew gray.
All he had borne, and what he yet must bear,
He murmurs to her whilst she trembles there:
The hero then with dying ardour press’d,
For the last time, his bosom to her breast.
“Farewell! Minona, all my fears are flown,
And if I grieve, it is for thee alone:
Give me a kiss, and give me too a smile,
And let not tears that parting look defile.
Now will I drink the bitter draught of death,
And yield courageously my forfeit breath:—
Farewell! may heaven take thee in its care,”
He said, and mounted swiftly in the air.
She gaz’d; but he had vanish’d from her view;
She stood forsaken in the damp and dew,
Then dark emotion quiver’d in her eye,
And thus she pray’d, with hands uplifted high:
“Thou who wert vainly tempted in the wild,
Thou who wert always charitably mild,
Thou who mad’st Peter walk on billows blue,
Enable me my Harrald to pursue.”
Sunken already was the morning star,
The song of nightingales was heard afar,
The red sun peep’d above the mountain’s brow,
And flowers scented all the vale below.
There came a youthful maiden, gaily drest,
Bearing upon her back a feather-vest;
Fondly she kiss’d Minona’s features wan,
Gave her the robe, and then at once was gone.
And straight Minona clothes in it her limbs,
And soaring upward through the ether swims:
To moan and sob, her madden’d breast disdains,
Too big for such low comfort are its pains.
The fowls that meet her in yon airy fields,
She clips in pieces with an axe she wields;
Each clanging pinion ceaselessly she plies,
But cannot meet the raven or his prize.
She hears a faint shriek in the air below,
And, swift as eagle pounces on his foe,
Down, down, she dropp’d, and lighted on the shore,
Which far and wide was wet with Harrald’s gore.
She smil’d so ruefully, but still was mute—
His good right hand was lying at her foot:
That pledge of truth, in love’s unclouded day,
Was the sole remnant of the demon’s prey.
Deep in her breast she hid the bloody hand,
And bade adieu, for ever, to the land:
Again she scower’d through the airy path,
Her eyeballs terrible with madden’d wrath:
The raven-sorcerer at length she spied,
And soon her steel was with his hot blood dyed:
The huge black body, piecemeal, found a grave
Amid the bosom of the briny wave.