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The Brave Roland
THE BRAVE Roland!—the brave Roland!— | |
| False tidings reached the Rhenish strand | |
| That he had fallen in fight; | |
| And thy faithful bosom swooned with pain, | |
| O loveliest maid of Allémayne! | 5 |
| For the loss of thine own true knight. | |
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| But why so rash has she ta’en the veil, | |
| In yon Nonnenwerder’s cloisters pale? | |
| For her vow had scarce been sworn, | |
| And the fatal mantle o’er her flung, | 10 |
| When the Drachenfels to a trumpet rung,— | |
| ’T was her own dear warrior’s horn! | |
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| Woe! woe! each heart shall bleed, shall break! | |
| She would have hung upon his neck, | |
| Had he come but yester-even! | 15 |
| And he had clasped those peerless charms | |
| That shall never, never fill his arms, | |
| Or meet him but in heaven. | |
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| Yet Roland the brave, Roland the true, | |
| He could not bid that spot adieu; | 20 |
| It was dear still midst his woes, | |
| For he loved to breathe the neighboring air, | |
| And to think she blessed him in her prayer, | |
| When the Halleluiah rose. | |
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| There ’s yet one window of that pile, | 25 |
| Which he built above the nun’s green isle; | |
| Thence sad and oft looked he | |
| (When the chant and organ sounded slow) | |
| On the mansion of his love below, | |
| For herself he might not see. | 30 |
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| She died!—he sought the battle-plain; | |
| Her image filled his dying brain, | |
| When he fell and wished to fall: | |
| And her name was in his latest sigh, | |
| When Roland, the flower of chivalry, | 35 |
| Expired at Roncevall. | |
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