The second let down on the face that slept
The veil, and turned him away and wept:
“Alas for thee there on the funeral-bier!
For thee I have loved full many a year.”
The third, he lifted again the veil,
And kissed her upon the mouth so pale:
“I loved thee before, I love thee to-day,
And I will love thee for ever and aye!”
The last line, “Und werde dich lieben in ewigkeit,” would be more correctly rendered, “And I will love thee in eternity.” And we are equally aware that our “landlady’s sign” is objectionable, as the original is simply, “They turned in there to a landlady’s.” But it would be hard to render it otherwise without losing the quadruple rhyme, which has a certain mournful elegance. ‘The Landlady’s Daughter’ naturally leads us to ‘The Goldsmith’s Daughter.’ In this poem we must not suppose that the hero and heroine meet for the first time. The maiden has fallen in love with the knight, her superior in station, but scarcely dares even confess it to herself, till the knight agreeably surprises her by adorning her as his bride, taking her acceptance for granted. We would not spoil the romance by hinting that it may not have been an uncommon case in the middle ages for young noblemen of small fortune to seek their brides from the rich bourgeoisie of the Free Towns.