O maid, unrelenting and cold as thou art,
My bosom is proud as thine own.
Seward
It was in the twilight of the day when her trial,
if it could be called such, had taken place, that
a low knock was heard at the door of Rebecca’s
prison-chamber. It disturbed not the inmate,
who was then engaged in the evening prayer recommended
by her religion, and which concluded with a hymn we
have ventured thus to translate into English.
When Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out of the land of bondage came,
Her father’s God before her moved,
An awful guide, in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonish’d lands
The cloudy pillar glided slow;
By night, Arabia’s crimson’d sands
Return’d the fiery column’s glow.
There rose the choral hymn of praise,
And trump and timbrel answer’d keen,
And Zion’s daughters pour’d their lays,
With priest’s and warrior’s voice between.
No portents now our foes amaze,
Forsaken Israel wanders lone;
Our fathers would not know thy ways,
And thou hast left them to their own.
But, present still, though now unseen;
When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of thee a cloudy screen
To temper the deceitful ray.
And oh, when stoops on Judah’s path
In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be thou, long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning, and a shining light!
Our harps we left by Babel’s streams,
The tyrant’s jest, the Gentile’s scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,
And mute our timbrel, trump, and horn.
But thou hast said, the blood of goat,
The flesh of rams, I will not prize;
A contrite heart, and humble thought,
Are mine accepted sacrifice.
When the sounds of Rebecca’s devotional hymn
had died away in silence, the low knock at the door
was again renewed. “Enter,” she said,
“if thou art a friend; and if a foe, I have not
the means of refusing thy entrance.”
“I am,” said Brian de Bois-Guilbert, entering
the apartment, “friend or foe, Rebecca, as the
event of this interview shall make me.”
Alarmed at the sight of this man, whose licentious
passion she considered as the root of her misfortunes,
Rebecca drew backward with a cautious and alarmed,
yet not a timorous demeanour, into the farthest corner
of the apartment, as if determined to retreat as far
as she could, but to stand her ground when retreat
became no longer possible. She drew herself into
an attitude not of defiance, but of resolution, as
one that would avoid provoking assault, yet was resolute
to repel it, being offered, to the utmost of her power.
“You have no reason to fear me, Rebecca,”
said the Templar; “or if I must so qualify my
speech, you have at least now no reason to fear
me.”
“I fear you not, Sir Knight,” replied
Rebecca, although her short-drawn breath seemed to
belie the heroism of her accents; “my trust
is strong, and I fear thee not.”
