Orval, or The Fool of Time :: :: University of Virginia Library

Militza has long soft eyelashes,
So darkly-dreaming droopt on either cheek,
You scarce can guess what little lightning flashes
From those deep eyes, beneath them beaming, break.
And her fair face, like a flower,

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Has such drooping ways about it,
I have watcht her, many an hour,
Three full years (O never doubt it!),
And yet never have seen fairly
Eyes or face,—reveal'd so rarely!

Only just to rob one glance
From the happy grass beneath her
On the green where maidens dance
When the month makes merry weather,
I the Kolo call'd together,
Trusting to my happy chance.
While the dance grew sweeter, faster
(Bosoms heaving, tresses shaken),
Suddenly with dim disaster
All the sky was overtaken.
Rolling darkness drown'd the sunlight,
Rolling thunder drencht the valleys,
And in heaven was left but one light
From the lightning's livid sallies.

Like a necklace lightly shatter'd,
Shedding rubies, shedding pearls,
Here and there the Kolo scatter'd
All its bevy of bright girls.
Little, darling, timid creatures!
Each, with frighten'd flutter'd features,
Lifted up her pretty eyes
To the tempest growling o'er her;
But Militza, very wise,
Still kept looking straight before her.

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Little voices, silvery, wild,
All at once, in fretful cadence,
Brake out chiding the sweet child.
“What, Militza!” cried the maidens,
“Those grass-grazing eyes, I wonder,
From the ground can nothing startle?
Hark, child! how it groans, the thunder!
See! the lightnings, how they dartle
Here and there by angry fits,
In and out the stormy weather!
Hast thou wholly lost thy wits,
Little fool? Or must we deem
Thou wouldst something wiser seem
Than the whole world put together?”

But Militza answers . . . “Neither
Have I lost my wits, nor grown
Wiser, maidens, I must own,
Than the whole world put together.
I am not the Vila white,
Who, amidst her mountain ranges,
Lifting looks of stormy light,
Through his fifty moody changes,
Woos the tempest's troubled sprite
Down the mountain melting o'er her—
I am not a Vila white,
But a girl that looks before her.”