Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Sydney Dobell 1824–74A Nuptial Eve
Dobell-SO
In the year of war and death
She wears no sorrow!
By her face so young and fair,
By the happy wreath
That rules her happy hair,
She might be a bride to-morrow!
She sits and sings within her moonlit bower,
Her moonlit bower in rosy June,
Yet ah, her bridal breath,
Like fragrance from some sweet night-blowing flower,
Moves from her moving lips in many a mournful tune!
She sings no song of love’s despair,
She sings no lover lowly laid,
No fond peculiar grief
Has ever touched or bud or leaf
Of her unblighted spring.
She sings because she needs must sing;
She sings the sorrow of the air
Whereof her voice is made.
That night in Britain howsoe’er
On any chords the fingers stray’d
They gave the notes of care.
Long since in some pale shade
Of some far twilight told,
She knows not when or where,
She sings, with trembling hand on trembling lute-strings laid:—
That keeps the shadowy kine
“Oh, Keith of Ravelston,
The sorrows of thy line!”
The merry path that leads
Down the golden morning hill,
And thro’ the silver meads;
The stile beneath the tree,
The maid that kept her mother’s kine,
The song that sang she!
She sat beneath the thorn
When Andrew Keith of Ravelston
Rode thro’ the Monday morn;
His belted jewels shine!
Oh, Keith of Ravelston,
The sorrows of thy line!
Comes evening down the glade,
And still there sits a moonshine ghost
Where sat the sunshine maid.
She keeps the shadowy kine;
Oh, Keith of Ravelston,
The sorrows of thy line!
The stile is lone and cold,
The burnie that goes babbling by
Says nought that can be told.
She keeps her shadowy kine;
Oh, Keith of Ravelston,
The sorrows of thy line!
Why blanch thy cheeks for fear?
The ancient stile is not alone,
’T is not the burn I hear!
She keeps her shadowy kine;
Oh, Keith of Ravelston,
The sorrows of thy line!