When splendor offers, and when Fame incites, my days. sweeps grove, GONDOLINE; A BALLAD. THE night it was dark, and the moon it shone Serenely on the Sea, They murmur'd pleasantly. When Gondoline roam'd along the shore, A maiden full fair to the sight; Though love had made bleak the rose on her cheek, And turn’d it to deadly white. Her thoughts they were drear, and the silent tear It tilld her faint blue eye, As oft she heard, in fancy's ear, Her Bertrand's dying sigh. Her Bertrand was the bravest youth Of all our good King's men, And he was gone to the Holy Land To fight the Saracen. And many a month had pass'd away, And many a rolling year, Could of her lover hear. Full oft she vainly tried to pierce The Ocean's misty face; She on the wave could trace. And every night she placed a light In the high rock's lonely tower, To guide her lover to the land, Should the murky tempest lower. But now despair bad seiz'd her breast, And sunken in her eye: « Oh! tell me but if Bertrand live, " And I in peace will die." She wander'd o'er the lonely shore, The Curlew screani'd above, She heard the scream with a sickening heart, Much boding of her love. Yet still she kept her lonely way, And this was all her cry, « Oh! tell me but if Bertrand live, And I in peace shall die," |