III.
The Water of Weir is rushing down, Foaming and furious, muddy and brown, From the heights where the laughing Näiads dwell, And cascades leap from the craggy fell, Where the mountain streamlets brattle and brawl, 'Midst the mountain maidens' echoing call, Through pools where the water-kelpies wait For the rider who dares the roaring spate. Rain-fed, proud, turgid, and swollen, Now foaming wild, now sombre and sullen; Dragging the rushes from banks and braes, Tearing the drooping branches of trees, Rolling them down by scallop and scaur, Involving all in a watery war-- Turned, and whirled, and swept along, Down to the sea to be buried and gone.
The peregrine, fixed on the wader's back, Is carried along in her devious track, As with a weak and a wailing scream The victim crosses the raging stream. "I will lose, I will lose my gay peregrine!" Cried shrilly the Ladye Tomasine: She will hurry across the bridge of wood, With its rail of wattle which long hath stood; Her nimble feet are upon the plank That will bear her over from bank to bank; She has crossed it times a thousandfold: Time brings youth and Time makes old; The wattles have rotted while she was growing, The wind is up and the waters rowing, And to keep her feet she must use her hand. "Come back! come back!" was the baron's command, Too late!--go wattles--a piercing scream! And the maid falls into the roaring stream! Round and round, in eddying whirl, Who shall save the perishing girl? Round and round, and down and away, Nothing to grasp, and nothing to stay. The baron stands fixed and wrings his hands, And looks to Sir Hubert, who trembling stands. Sir Hubert! one moment now is thine-- The next! and a power no less than divine Can save this maid of so many charms From the grasp of Death's enfolding arms. Spring! spring! Sir Hubert, the moment is thine To save a life, and a love to win. No! no! the dastard kestrel kite Aye hugs the earth in his stealthy flight. Hope gone! the pool at the otter's cave Will prove the Ladye Tomasine's grave. Ho! ho! see yonder comes rushing down A lithe young hind, though a simple clown-- Off bonnet and shoes, and coat and vest, A plunge! and he holds her round the waist! Three strokes of his arm, with his beautiful prize All safe, although faint, on the bank she lies! A cottager's wife came running down, "Take care of the ladye," said the clown. He has donned his clothes, and away he has gone, His name unuttered, his home unknown.
IV.
Up in the ancient Castle of Weir Sat the baron, the knight, and the fair Tomasine; And the baron he looked at his daughter dear, While the salt tears bleared his aged eyne; And then to the steward, with hat in hand: "Make known unto all, from Tweed to Tyne, A hundred rose nobles I'll give to the man Who saved the life of my Tomasine." Sir Hubert cried out, in an envious vein, "Who is he that will vouch for the lurdan loon? There's no one to say he would know him again, And another may claim the golden boon." Then said the ladye, "My eyes were closed, And I never did see this wondrous man; And the cottar woman she hath deposed He was gone ere his features she could scan." "Ho!" cried the baron, "I watched him then, As I stood on the opposite bank afeared; Of a hundred men I would ken him again, Though he were to doff his dun-brown beard."
A year has passed at the Castle of Weir, Yet no one has claimed the golden don; Most wonderful thing to tell or to hear! Was he of flesh and blood and bone? Though golden nobles might not him wile, Was there not something more benign? Was not for him a maiden's smile? Was not that maiden Tomasine?
V.
The ladye sat within her summer bower Alone, deep musing, in the still greenwood; Sadly and slowly passed the evening hour, Sad and sorrowful was her weary mood, For she had seen, beneath a shadowing tree, All fast asleep a beauteous rural swain, Whom she had often sighed again to see, But never yet had chanced to see again;-- So beautiful that, if the time had been In a long mythic age now past and gone, She might have deemed that she had haply seen The all-divine Latona's fair-haired son Come down upon our earth to pass a day Among the daughters fair of earth-born men, And had put on a suit of sober grey, To appear unto them as a rural swain. With features all so sweet in harmony, You might have feigned they breathed a music mild, With lire so peachy, fit to charm the eye, And lips right sure to conquer when they smiled, All seen through locks of lustrous auburn hair, Which wanton fairies had so gaily thrown To cover o'er a face so wondrous fair, Lest Dian might reclaim him as her own.
In the still moonlit hour there steals along, And falls upon her roused and listening ear The notes of some night-wandering minstrel's song, And oh! so sweet and sad it was to hear. You might have deemed it came from teylin sweet, Touched by some gentle fairy's cunning hand, To tell us of those joys that we shall meet In some far distant and far happier land; And oft at night, as time still passed away, That hopeless song throughout the greenwood came, And oft she heard repeated in the lay The well-known sound of her own maiden name; And often did she wish, and often sighed, That bashful minstrel for once more to see, To know if he were him she had espied All fast asleep beneath the greenwood tree.
VI.
Alace! and alace! for that false pride In the hearts of those of high degree, And that gentle love should be decried By its noblest champion, Chivalrie. If the baron shall hear a whispered word Of that fond lover's sweet minstrelsie, That love-lorn heart and his angry sword May some night better acquainted be. Woe! woe! to the viper's envenomed tongue That obeys the hest of a coward's heart, Who tries to avenge his fancied wrong By getting another to act his part. Sir Hubert has lisped in the baron's ear, When drinking wine at the evening hour, That a minstrel clown met his daughter dear At night in her lonely greenwood bower. "Hush! hush! Sir Hubert, thy words are fires; Elves are about us that hear and see, Who may tell to the ghost of my noble sires Of a damned blot on our pedigree." And the baron frowned with darkened brow, And by the bones of his fathers swore That from that night this minstrel theou, To his daughter would warble his love no more.
VII.
That night the minstrel sang in softer flow, Waxing and waning soft and softer still, Like autumn's night winds breathing loun and low, Or evening murmur of the wimpling rill; But there was heard that night no farewell strain, As in foretime there ever used to be-- A stop! and then no more was heard again That bashful lover's hapless minstrelsie. Next morn the maid, with purpose to enjoy The forest flowers and wild birds' early song, Unto the greenwood went; and to employ Her weary musing as she went along, Love's magic memory from its depths upbrought The notes that ever still so sweetly hung About her heart; and as she gaily thought, She sung them o'er as she had heard them sung. Onward she moved: her dreamy, listless eye Had leant upon a fragrant wild-rose bed, And, glancing farther, what does she descry? Stretched stiff and bloody, his sad spirit fled, Yea, him whom when asleep she once had seen, And had so often wished again to see, Now dead and cold 'mong the leaves so green, And all beneath the well-known greenwood tree.
"Good day, my ladye," then some one said-- It was Sir Hubert there close behind; "He will sing no more, or I am belied, For the reason, I wot, that he wanteth wind." Up came the baron in angry vein; He casts his eye on the body there; He scans the features again and again With a look of doubt and shudder of fear; His hands he wrings with a groan of pain, He rolls his eyeballs with gesture wild-- "Great God! by a villain's counsel I've slain The youth who saved my darling child!"
Among yon hoary elms that o'er him grow A harp is hung to catch the evening gale, That sings to him in accents soft and low, And soothes the maiden with its sorrowful wail, Who, as she sits within her greenwood bower, And listens to the teylin's solemn strain, Bethinks her, in her tears, of every hour That gentle youth had sung to her in vain.
VIII.
THE ROMAUNT OF ST. MARY'S WYND.
I. Of Scotland's cities, still the rarest Is ancient Edinburgh town; And of her ladies, still the fairest There you see walk up and down: Be they gay, or be they gayless, There they beck and there they bow, From the Castle to the Palace, In farthingale and furbelow.
Says Lady Jane to Lady Janet, "Thy gown, I vow, is stiff and grand; Though there were feint a body in it, Still I trow that it would stand." And Lady Janet makes rejoinder: "Thy boddice, madam, is sae tend, The bonny back may crack asunder, But, by my faith, it winna bend."
But few knew one both fairer, kinder, The fair maid of St. Mary's Wynd; Among the great you will not find her, For she was of the humbler kind. For her minnie spinning, plodding, She wore no ribbons to her shune, No mob-cap on her head nid-nodding, But aye the linsey-woolsey gown.