“Bertha!” large drops of anguish came
On Rudolph’s brow, as he breathed that name—
“Oh, fair and false one, wake, and fear!
I, the betrayed, the scorned, am here.”
The eye moved not from its dull eclipse,
The voice came not from the fast-shut lips;
No matter! well that gazer knew
The tone of bliss, and the eyes of blue,
Sir Rudolph hid his burning face
With both his hands, for a minute’s space,
And all his frame, in awful fashion,
Was shaken by some sudden passion.
What guilty fancies o’er him ran?
Oh! pity will be slow to guess them;
And never, save to the holy man,
Did good Sir Rudolph e’er confess them.
But soon his spirit you might deem
Came forth from the shade of the fearful dream;
His cheek, though pale, was calm again,
And he spoke in peace, though he spoke in pain:
“Not mine! not mine! now Mary, mother,
Aid me the sinful hope to smother!
Not mine, not mine!—I have loved thee long,
Thou hast quitted me with grief and wrong;
But pure the heart of a knight should be—
Sleep on, sleep on! thou art safe for me:
Yet shalt thou know by a certain sign
Whose lips have been so near to thine,
Whose eyes have looked upon thy sleep,
And turned away, and longed to weep,
Whose heart—mourn—madden as it will—
Has spared thee, and adored thee still!”
His purple mantle, rich and wide,
From his neck the trembling youth untied,
And flung it o’er those dangerous charms,
The swelling neck, and the rounded arms.
Once more he looked, once more he sighed;
And away, away from the perilous tent,
Swift as the rush of an eagle’s wing,
Or the flight of a shaft from Tartar string,
Into the wood Sir Rudolph went:
Not with more joy the schoolboys run
To the gay green fields, when their task is done;—
Not with more haste the members fly,
When Hume has caught the Speaker’s eye.
At last the daylight came; and then
A score or two of serving men,
Supposing that some sad disaster
Had happened to their lord and master,
Went out into the wood, and found him
Unhorsed, and with no mantle round him.
Ere he could tell his tale romantic,
The leech pronounced him clearly frantic,
So ordered him at once to bed,
And clapped a blister on his head.
Within the sound of the Castle clock
There stands a huge and rugged rock;
And I have heard the peasants say,
That the grieving groom at noon that day
Found gallant Roland cold and stiff,
At the base of the black and beetling cliff.
Beside the rock there is an oak,
Tall, blasted by the thunder-stroke;
And I have heard the peasants say,
That there Sir Rudolph’s mantle lay,
And coiled in many a deadly wreath,
A venomous serpent slept beneath.
THE LEGEND OF THE HAUNTED TREE.
“Deep is the bliss of the belted Knight,
When he kisses at dawn the silken glove,
And goes, in his glittering armour dight,
To shiver a lance for his lady-love!
Lightly he couches the beaming spear;
His mistress sits with her maidens by,
Watching the speed of his swift career,
With a whispered prayer, and a murmured sigh.