A maiden knight—to me is given
Such hope, I know not fear;
I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven
That often meet me here.
I muse on joy that will not cease,
Pure spaces clothed in living beams,
Pure lilies of eternal peace,
Whose odours haunt my dreams;
And, stricken by an angel’s hand,
This mortal armour that I wear,
This weight and size, this heart and eyes,
Are touch’d, are turn’d to
finest air.
The clouds are broken in the sky,
And thro’ the mountain-walls
A rolling organ-harmony
Swells up, and shakes and falls.
Then move the trees, the copses nod,
Wings flutter, voices hover clear:
“O just and faithful knight of God!
Ride on! the prize is near”.
So pass I hostel, hall, and grange;
By bridge and ford, by park and pale,
All-arm’d I ride, whate’er
betide,
Until I find the holy Grail.
First published in 1842 but written in or before 1840.
See ‘Life’, i., 209. Not altered
since.
Sweet Emma Moreland of yonder town
Met me walking on yonder way,
“And have you lost your heart?”
she said;
“And are you married yet, Edward
Gray?”
Sweet Emma Moreland spoke to me:
Bitterly weeping I turn’d away:
“Sweet Emma Moreland, love no more
Can touch the heart of Edward Gray.
“Ellen Adair she loved me well,
Against her father’s and mother’s
will:
To-day I sat for an hour and wept,
By Ellen’s grave, on the windy hill.
“Shy she was, and I thought her
cold;
Thought her proud, and fled over the sea;
Fill’d I was with folly and spite,
When Ellen Adair was dying for me.
“Cruel, cruel the words I said!
Cruelly came they back to-day:
‘You’re too slight and fickle,’
I said,
‘To trouble the heart of Edward
Gray’.
“There I put my face in the grass—
Whisper’d, ’Listen to my despair:
I repent me of all I did:
Speak a little, Ellen Adair!’
“Then I took a pencil, and wrote
On the mossy stone, as I lay,
’Here lies the body of Ellen Adair;
And here the heart of Edward Gray!’
“Love may come, and love may go,
And fly, like a bird, from tree to tree:
But I will love no more, no more,
Till Ellen Adair come back to me.
“Bitterly wept I over the stone:
Bitterly weeping I turn’d away;
There lies the body of Ellen Adair!
And there the heart of Edward Gray!”
MADE AT THE COCK
