Читать книгу The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 487, April 30, 1831 - Various - Страница 2

“Knight, a sister’s truest love,

This mine heart devotes to thee—

Ask no other love to prove;

Marriage! no, that ne’er can be.

Still unmov’d to all appearing,

Calmly can I see thee fly—

Still break the chain no sorrow fearing,

Save a tear from lover’s eye.”

This he heard without replying,

Silent woes his bosom wrung;

In his arms he clasp’d her sighing—

On his courser’s back he sprung.

Thro’ the Switzer’s rugged land

Vassals, at their lord’s behest,

Sought Judea’s sainted strand—

Each the red-cross on his breast.

Mighty deeds all dangers braving

Wrought the Christian hero’s arm;

Oft his helmet plumes were waving

High above the Paynim swarm.2

But tho’ Moslem hosts were quaking

At the Toggenburger’s name,

Still his breast, with anguish breaking,

Felt its sorrow yet the same:

Felt it till a year departed—

Felt it of all hope bereft;

Restless, joyless, broken-hearted,

Then the warring bands he left;—

Bade on Joppa’s sandy shore

Seamen hoist the swelling sail;

Swift the bark to Europe bore

O’er the tide the fav’ring gale.

When the pilgrim, sorrow laden,

Sought the gates he lov’d so well;

From the portals of his maiden

Words of thunder3 rang his knell:

“She ye seek has ta’en the veil,

To God alone her thoughts are given;

Yestere’en the cloisters pale

Saw the bride betroth’d to heaven.”

From the castle of his sires,

Mad with grief, the hero flew;

War no more his bosom fires,

Arms he spurns, and courser true.

Far from Toggenburg alone

Wends he on his secret way,

To friend and foe alike unknown,

Clad in peasant’s mean array.

On a mountain’s lonesome glade,

’Neath a hut he sought repose—

Near where ’mid the lime-tree’s shade,

The convent pinnacles arose;

There, from morning’s dawn first bright’ning

Till the ev’ning stars began,

Secret hopes his anguish light’ning,

Sate the solitary man.

On the cloister fixed his eye,

Thro’ the hours’ weary round,

To his maiden’s lattice nigh,

Till he heard that lattice sound—

Till that dearest form was seen—

Till she on her lover smil’d—

And the turret-grates between

Look’d devout and angel-mild.*

There he sate thro’ many a day,

Thro’ many a year’s revolving round—

Alike to hope and grief a prey,

Till he heard the lattice sound.

Years were fleeting; when one morning

Saw a corse the cloister nigh—

To the long-watch’d turret turning

Still its cold and glassy eye.