Love's memorial :: :: University of Virginia Library

Since thou alone art free,
Ballad, I bid thee go
Where I no more shall come,
Thou knowest, where oversea
The mountain pine-trees blow,
And my heart hath its home.

Yea, past the washing of the windy sea,
Far inland, where upon a mountain's crest
Her castle shines, take thou my words for me;
Say how my soul with misery is oppressed
For loss of land, and love long time confessed
To her who holds my heart
Within her white sweet hands,
And heeds not if it dies
Or lives, who saw me part
To these waste northern lands
With unreluctant eyes.

Song, born of hopeless love and violent pain
Tell her of what despair thou art the child,
That she may take thee in her arms and strain
Thee to her full, fair bosom undefiled;
And how beyond the shores and wet winds wild
Thy master sees but strange
Wide hills, not where of old
The rose petals were red
And bade the summer change
The white leaf with the gold,
And flowers of lovelier head.

Or if her scorn flame on thee, then lie down
Before her feet, and, kissing them, fall dead;
And in the sea I too will seek to drown
My grief, so haply when all life is fled
The tides may drive my beaten limbs and head
To my sweet fatherland,
And the sea-birds may call
Above me where I lie,
Along the shining sand,
Washed up, and over all
The sweet blue southern sky.

And she, perchance, upon some festive day
May ride by me with laughter, and awhile
Look down on me, still laughing, and will say:
“What thing is this, wave-battered, torn and vile?”
Then pass, gold-glittering, onward with a smile.
Till the returning tide
Bear me again from earth
To grind my fleshless bones
Among the caverns wide
Where the sea-maids make mirth,
And in dim weeds and stones.