"By this golden ring ye see on this lifted hand pardiè,"— Toll slowly. "If, this hour, on castle-wall, can be room for steed from stall, Shall be also room for me.
"So the sweet saints with me be" (did she utter solemnly),— Toll slowly. "If a man, this eventide, on this castle wall will ride, He shall ride the same with me."
Oh, he sprang up in the selle, and he laughed out bitter-well,— Toll slowly. "Wouldst thou ride among the leaves, as we used on other eves, To hear chime a vesper-bell?"
She clang closer to his knee—"Ay, beneath the cypress-tree!"— Toll slowly. "Mock me not, for otherwhere than along the greenwood fair, Have I ridden fast with thee!
"Fast I rode with new-made vows, from my angry kinsman's house!" Toll slowly. "What! and would you men should reck that I dared more for love's sake As a bride than as a spouse?
"What, and would you it should fall, as a proverb, before all,"— Toll slowly. "That a bride may keep your side while through castle-gate you ride, Yet eschew the castle-wall?"
Ho! the breach yawns into ruin, and roars up against her suing,— Toll slowly. With the inarticulate din, and the dreadful falling in— Shrieks of doing and undoing!
Twice he wrung her hands in twain, but the small hands closed again,— Toll slowly. Back he reined the steed—back, back! but she trailed along his track With a frantic clasp and strain.
Evermore the foemen pour through the crash of window and door,— Toll slowly. And the shouts of Leigh and Leigh, and the shrieks of "kill!" and "flee!" Strike up clear amid the roar.
Thrice he wrung her hands in twain,—but they closed and clung again,— Toll slowly. Wild she clung, as one, withstood, clasps a Christ upon the rood, In a spasm of deathly pain.