| |
| SHE sits beneath the elder-tree | |
| And sings her song so sweet, | |
| And dreams o’er the burn that darksomely | |
| Runs by her moonwhite feet. | |
| |
| Her hair is dark as starless night, | 5 |
| Her flower-crowned face is pale, | |
| But oh, her eyes are lit with light | |
| Of dread ancestral bale. | |
| |
| She sings an eerie song, so wild | |
| With immemorial dule— | 10 |
| Though young and fair, Death’s mortal child | |
| That sits by that dark pool. | |
| |
| And oft she cries an eldritch scream, | |
| When red with human blood | |
| The burn becomes a crimson stream, | 15 |
| A wild, red, surging flood: | |
| |
| Or shrinks, when some swift tide of tears— | |
| The weeping of the world— | |
| Dark eddying ’neath man’s phantom-fears | |
| Is o’er the red stream hurled. | 20 |
| |
| For hours beneath the elder-tree | |
| She broods beside the stream; | |
| Her dark eyes filled with mystery, | |
| Her dark soul rapt in dream. | |
| |
| The lapsing flow she heedeth not | 25 |
| Through deepest depths she scans: | |
| Life is the shade that clouds her thought, | |
| As Death ’s the eclipse of man’s. | |
| |
| Time seems but as a bitter thing | |
| Remembered from of yore: | 30 |
| Yet ah (she thinks) her song she ’ll sing | |
| When Time’s long reign is o’er. | |
| |
| Erstwhiles she bends alow to hear | |
| What the swift water sings, | |
| The torrent running darkly clear | 35 |
| With secrets of all things. | |
| |
| And then she smiles a strange sad smile | |
| And lets her harp lie long; | |
| The death-waves oft may rise the while, | |
| She greets them with no song. | 40 |
| |
| Few ever cross that dreary moor, | |
| Few see that flower-crowned head; | |
| But whoso knows that wild song’s lure | |
| Knoweth that he is dead. | |
| |
