The maiden gave the ring she wore
To him who gave it her before:
“O take the ring,—for thou and thine
Are hated,—not by me,—but mine:—
Father and mother will not hear thee,
Brother and sister both forswear thee:
Yet, think not, youth,—O think not ill
Of her who needs must love thee still!
I am a poor unhappy maid,
Whose path the darkest clouds o’ershade;
I sowed sweet basil, and there grew
On that same spot the bitterest rue:
And wormwood, that unholy flower,
Is now alone my marriage dower;
The only flower which they shall wear
Who to the maiden’s marriage come,
When for my marriage altar there
The guests shall find the maiden’s tomb.”
LAST PETITION.
Upon her mother’s bosom lay
Young Mira, and she pined away.
’T was in her own maternal shed;
And thus the anxious mother said:—
“What ails thee, tell me, Mira! pray?”
“O ask me not, my mother dear!
I feel that death approaches near;
I shall not rise from this my bed;
But, mother mine! when I am dead—
O mother mine! call round me all
My playmates to my funeral:
And let the friends I loved receive
The little gifts that I shall leave;
Then let me sleep in peace beneath.—
There’s one, my mother, I should grieve
To be divided from in death.
Then call around me priests divine,
And pious pilgrims, mother mine!
The forehead of thy dying daughter
Steep in the rose’s fragrant water.
And, mother, let my forehead be
Dried with the rose-leaves from the tree;
And pillow not thy daughter’s head,
O mother! with the common dead;
But let me have a quiet tomb
Adjacent to my Mirjo’s home,
And near my Mirjo’s nightly bed;
So when he wakes his thoughts shall dwell
With her he loved, and loved so well.”
LOVE FOR A BROTHER.
The sun sank down behind the gold-flower’d hill;
The warriors from the fight approach the shore:
There stood young George’s wife, serene and still:
She counted all the heroes o’er and o’er,
And found not those she loved—though they were three:—
Her husband, George; her marriage friend, another,
Who late had led the marriage revelry;
The third, her best-beloved, her only brother.
Her husband, he was dead; she rent her hair
For him.—Her friend was gone,—for him she tore
Her cheeks.—Her only brother was not there:
For him she pluck’d her eye-balls from their bed.
Her hair grew forth as lovely as before;
Upon her cheeks her former beauties spread;
But nothing could her perish’d sight restore:
Nought heals the heart that mourns a brother dead.
REBUKE.
“Maiden! hast thou seen my steed?”
‘Faithless one! not I, indeed!
But I heard that thou hadst tied him
To the mountain-maple tree;
When a stranger pass’d beside him,
Full of scorn and rage was he:
With his hoofs the ground he beat;
Of his master’s guilt he knew.
Not one maiden did he cheat:
No; that master cheated two:
One has borne a wretched child;
One with grief and shame is wild!’