Then she is drown'd?
--------Drown'd--Drown'd.
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia!
And therefore I forbid my tears.--_Hamlet_.
It was a solitary spot!--
The shallow brook that ran throughout the forest,
(Aye chattering as it went,) there took a turn
And widened;--all its music died away,
And in the place, a silent eddy told
That there the stream grew deeper. There dark trees
Funereal (cypress, yew, and shadowy pine,
And spicy cedar,) cluster'd; and at night
Shook from their melancholy branches sounds
And sighs like death!--'Twas strange, for thro' the day
They stood quite motionless, and looked, methought,
Like monumental things, which the sad earth
From its green bosom had cast out in pity,
To mark a young girl's grave. The very leaves
Disown'd their natural green, and took a black
And mournful hue: and the rough brier had stretch'd
His straggling arms across the water, and
Lay like an armed sentinel there, catching
With his tenacious leaf, straws, wither'd boughs,
Moss that the banks had lost, coarse grasses which
Swam with the current--and with these it hid
The poor Marcelia's death-bed!
Never may net
Of vent'rous fisher be cast in with hope,
For not a fish abides there. The slim deer
Snorts, as he ruffles with his shorten'd breath
The brook, and, panting, flies th' unholy place--
And the wild heifer lows and passes on;
The foaming hound laps not, and winter birds
Go higher up the stream. And yet _I_ love
To loiter there; and when the rising moon
Flames down the avenue of pines, and looks
Red and dilated through the evening mists,
And chequer'd as the heavy branches sway
To and fro with the wind, I listen, and
Can fancy to myself that voices there
Plain, and low prayers come moaning thro' the leaves
For some misdeed!
The story goes, that a
Neglected girl (an orphan whom the world
Frown'd upon,) once strayed thither, and 'twas thought
Did cast her in the stream. You may have heard
Of one Marcelia, poor Molini's daughter, who
Fell ill, and came to want in youth? No?--Oh!
She loved a man who marked her not. He wed,
And then the girl grew sick, and pin'd away,
And drown'd herself for love!--Some day or other
I'll tell you all the story.
* * *
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