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II.

Alas, for Ranolf! in his passionate pain
That image ever was before his brain
In terrible distinctness night and day!
With pertinacious torture self-applied
How would he conjure up to his despair,
And paint with accurate anguish-seeking care
Its harrowing details o'er and o'er again!
How, while the river ran its calm career,
From the spent freshet's fury once more clear;
All heartless Nature, bright, alive and gay
With its accustomed, gentle, joyous stir—
How then they found—O say not her!
She could not be the form that lay
So stilly—half above and half beneath
The shallow, bright, transparent stream,
Upon the clean smooth gravel bank
From which it slowly shrank:
Such mournful meek content upon the face
That you could think it for a little space
Lit by some sadly-pleasing dream;
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But then so marble-like and motionless—
Persistent in intensest quietness—
Too soon the moulded lineaments you know
Fixed in the dread serenity of death.
One quiet arm the peaceful head below—
While ever in its flow
The eddying current would come up and play
With the long tresses—as to coax away
And lure the floating tangles to and fro;
While others, in the sunshine dried,
The idle breeze at times would lift aside
Gently—then leave at rest,
Where curling they caressed
The cold unheaving breast;
Or revelled in the gloss and gleam of life,
As if in mockery spread
Along the form that lay as still and dead
As any of the logs of driftwood rife,
By the decreasing tide
Left near it as it fled.—
But piteous—O how piteous! there to see
The wavelets in their sunny chase
In that deserted place—
Upon the bank exposed and lone,
With such an inward-happy sound,
Familiarly and carelessly
Gurgling against and rippling round
The sad and sacred human face,
As if it were a stone.
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