Forth from the castle’s ancient gate,
A dread procession slow
Advanced, who mourned the happless fate
That laid such beauty low.
Above them many a waxen torch,
In darkness of the night,
Shed to the chapel’s gothic porch
A dim and mournful light.
And hooded closely many a friar
Sung prayers the bier around,
The massy bells within the spire
Rung forth an awful sound.
Two nights had passed, no torche’s ray
Illumed the testless tide,
But fleetly o’er the castle bay
Again the skiff did glide.
Swift bark, thy pilot braved the wrath
Of ocean’s wildest war,
But knows not how the damp of death
Has quenched his leading star.
Alas the fair whose beauty lured
His path across the wave,
The headsman’s stroke for him endured
To fill a bloody grave.
Within the chapel of Saint Gil
Intombed she slumbers low;
See, distant torches burning still...
Hark, bells are pealing slow!
All now is past—lies o’er the dead
The cold sepulchral stone;
And, see: a knight doth ceaseless tread
The echoing aisles alone.
His robes are black, but woe doth shroud
His heart in darker gloom;
And lo, he stretches, sobbing loud,
His form upon her tomb.
—‘Oh! open, grave, my heart is riven,
I taste delight no more,
Let death unite us now, whom heaven
In life asunder tore.
‘And her who calmly sleeps beneath
Again to me reveal,
That by her side, I may, in death,
My crime with her conceal.
‘It is not, torn with inward strife,
My wish to linger on,
And live, when she, the very life
Of all my hopes, is gone.’
Then fell his tears; his hands were clasped,
And moanings of despair
Burst from his heart, his blade he grasped
To still the conflict there.
But why inactive did he stand?
A voice unearthly rose
Out of the tomb, and stayed his hand
Till on the hilt it froze.
Like hollow gusts in winter drear,
That sound, appalling, came
So deep and sudden o’er his ear,
It deathlike thrilled his frame.
—‘Live, cavalier, though I no more
Survive, let life be thine,
Since for my crime the stroke I bore
The fault alone was mine.
‘Cold horror dwells beneath this stone,
And all I knew above
Of glowing life from me is gone,
Except remorse and love.
‘The arms shall clasp thy neck no more
Whose shape thou oft hast praised,
The eyes with earth are covered o’er—
That kindly on thee gazed.
‘The mouth whose lips did revel free
On thine, is senseless now;
But that fond heart which beat for thee
Death cannot chill its glow.
‘Live, live, Sir Knight; a soul like thine
To honour should aspire;
Oh! learn to be, from fate like mine,
A husband and a sire.
‘And name the maiden after me
Whose heart shall thee adore:
Than I, more faultless she may be,
But cannot love thee more.
‘And oh! instruct her daughters young
That love may never sway
Their hearts to ill—think how I flung
For thee my life away.’