Griselda :: :: University of Virginia Library

If ever thou shalt follow silver Seine
Through his French vineyards and French villages,
Oh! for the love of pity turn aside
At Vernier, and bear to linger there—
The gentle river doth so—lingering long
Round the dark moorland, and the pool Grand'mer,
And then with slower ripple steals away
Down from his merry Paris. Do thou this;
'Tis kind and piteous to bewail the dead,—
The joyless, sunless dead; and these lie there,
Buried full fifty fathoms in the pool,
Whose rough dark wave is closed above their grave,
Like the black cover of an ancient book
Over a tearful story.

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Very lovely
Was Julie de Montargis: even now—
Now that six hundred years are dead with her,
Her village name—the name a stranger hears—
Is, “La plus belle des belles;”—they tell him yet,
The glossy golden lilies of the land
Lost lustre in her hair; and that she owned
The noble Norman eye—the violet eye
Almost—so far and fine its lashes drooped,
Darkened to purple: all the country-folk
Went lightly to their work at sight of her
And all their children learned a grace by heart,
And said it with small lips when she went by,
The Lady of the Castle. Very dear
Was all this beauty and this gentleness
Unto her first love and her playfellow,
Roland le Vavasour.

Too dear to leave,
Save that his knightly vow to pluck a palm,
And bear the cross broidered above his heart,

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To where upon the cross Christ died for him,
Led him away from loving. But a year,
And they shall meet—alas! to those that joy,
It is a pleasant season, all too short,
Made of white winter and of scarlet spring,
With fireside kisses and sweet summer-nights:
But parted lovers count its minutes up,
And see no sunshine. Julie heeded none,
When she had belted on her Roland's sword,
Buckled his breastplate, and upon her lip
Taken his last long kisses.

Listen now!
She was no light-o'-love, to change and change,
And very deeply in her heart she kept
The night and hour St. Ouen's shrine should see
A true-love meeting. Walking by the pool,
Many a time she longed to wear a wing,
As fleet and white as wore the white-winged gull,
That she might hover over Roland's sails,
Follow him to the field, and in the battle

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Keep the hot Syrian sun from dazing him:
High on the turret many an autumn-eve,
When the light, merry swallow tried his plumes
For foreign flight, she gave him messages,—
Fond messages of love, for Palestine,
Unto her knight. What wonder, loving so,
She greeted well the brother that he sent
From Ascalon with spoils—Claude Vavasour?
Could she do less?—he had so deft a hand
Upon the mandolin, and sang so well
What Roland did so bravely; nay, in sooth,
She had not heart to frown upon his songs,
Though they sang other love and other deeds
Than Roland's, being brother to her lord.
Yet sometimes was she grave and sad of eye,
For pity of the spell her glance could work
Upon its watcher. Oh! he came to serve,
And stayed to love her; and she knew it now,
Past all concealment. Oftentimes his eyes,
Fastened upon her face, fell suddenly,

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For brother-love and shame; but oftener
Julie could see them, through her tender tears,
Fixed on some messenger from Holy Land
With wild significance, the thin white lips
Working for grief, because she smiled again.

He spake no love—he breathed no passionate tale,
Till there came one who told how Roland's sword,
From heel to point, dripped with the Paynim blood;
How Ascalon had seen, and Joppa's list,
And Gaza, and Nicæa's noble fight,
His chivalry; and how, with palm-branch won,
Bringing his honours and his wounds a-front,
His prow was cleaving Genoa's sapphire sea,
Bound homewards. Then, the last day of the year,
Claude brought his unused charger to the gate,
Sprang to the broad strong back, and reined its rage
Into a marble stillness. Ah! more still,
Young Claude le Vavasour, thy visage was,

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More marble-white. She stood to see him pass,
And their eyes met; and, ah! but hers were wet
To see his suffering; and she called his name,
And came below the gate; but he bowed down,
And thrust the vizor close over his face,
And so rode on.

Before St. Ouen's shrine
That night the lady watched—a sombre night,
With no sweet stars to say God heard or saw
Her prayers and tears: the grey stone statues gleamed
Through the gloom ghost-like; the still effigies
Of knight and abbess had a show of life,
Lit by the crimsons and the amethysts
That fell along them from the oriels;
And if she broke the silence with a step,
It seemed the echo lent them speech again
To speak in ghostly whispers; and o'er all,
With a weird paleness midnight might not hide,
Straight from the wall St. Ouen looked upon her,

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With his grim granite frown, bidding her hope
No lover's kiss that night—no loving kiss—
None—though there came the whisper of her name,
And a chill sleety blast of midnight wind
Moaning about the tombs, and striking her
For fear down to her knees.

That opened porch
Brought more than wind and whisper; there were steps,
And the dim wave of a white gaberdine—
Horribly dim; and then the voice again,
As though the dead called Julie. Was it dead,
The form which, at the holy altar foot,
Stood spectral in the spectral window-lights?
Ah, Holy Mother! dead—and in its hand
The pennon of Sir Roland, and the palm,
Both laid so stilly on the altar front;
A presence like a knight, clad in close mail
From spur to crest, yet from his armed heel
No footfall; a white face, pale as the stones,

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Turned upon Julie, long enough to know
How truly tryst was kept; and all was gone,
Leaving the lady on the flags, ice-cold.