“He seized her quickly by the foot,
All with his laidly wolfish claw;
Tore out her heart, and drank her blood,
And thus released himself he saw.
“Yet I am still a little bird,
And o’er the verdant meads I fly;
So sorrowful I pass my life,
But mostly ’neath the winter’s sky.
“But God be thanked, he me has waked,
And speech from him my tongue has won;
For fifteen years I have not spoke
As I with thee, Sir Knight, have done.
“But ever with a mournful voice,
Have sung the green wood bough upon;
And had no better dwelling place
Than gloomy forests, sad and lone.”
“Now hear, thou little Nightingale,
This simple thing would I propose,
In winter sit within my bower,
And hie thee forth when summer blows.”
“O many thanks, thou handsome knight
Thy offer would I accept full fane;
But ah, my step-dame that forbade
Whilst still in feather I remain.”
The Nightingale sat musing deep,
Unto the knight she paid no heed,
Until he seized her by the foot,
For God I ween had so decreed.
He carried her to his chamber in,
The doors and windows fast he made;
Then changed she to the strangest beasts
That ever mortal eye survey’d.
A lion now, and now a bear,
And now a coil of hissing snakes;
At last a Dragon she became,
And furious she the knight attacks.
He cut her with a little knife,
So that her blood did stain the floor;
Then straight before his eye there stood
A Damsel bright as any flower.