580

From the darkness upon Hæmus to the sea:

And with hands that clung to her new lord's knee,

As a virgin overborne with shame,

She besought him by her spouseless fame,

By the blameless breasts of a maid unmarried

And locks unmaidenly rent and harried,

And all her flower of body, born

To match the maidenhood of morn,

[Pg 33]

With the might of the wind's wrath wrenched and torn.

Vain, all vain as a dead man's vision

590

Falling by night in his old friends' sight,

To be scattered with slumber and slain ere light;

Such a breath of such a bridegroom in that hour

Of her prayers made mock, of her fears derision,

And a ravage of her youth as of a flower.

[Str. 2.

With a leap of his limbs as a lion's, a cry from his lips as of thunder,

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