GLOOMY night! how full thou art of darkness! Thou, my heart! art fuller yet of sorrow, Sorrow which I bear, but cannot utter! I have now no mother who will hear me, I have now no sister who will soothe me,— Yet I had a friend—but he is absent! Ere he comes, the night will be departed; Ere he wakes, the birds will sing their matins; Ere his kiss, the twilight hour will brighten: Go thy way, my friend! the day is dawning!
“SWEET maiden mine! thou blushing rose! Sweet, blushing roselet mine! For me, what thought of honey flows From those sweet lips of thine?” ‘I dare not speak with thee, my dear, My mother has forbid me.’ “Sweet maid! thy mother is not here.” ‘She saw me once, and chid me. Sir, she is in the garden there, Plucking the evergreen:— O may her heart like mine decay, Like mine decay unseen,— Ere love’s sweet power has pass’d away, As it had never been.’
LONG and lovely are Militza’s eyebrows, And they overhang her cheeks of roses— Cheeks of roses, and her snowy forehead. Three long years have I beheld the maiden, Could not look upon her eyes so lovely— On her eyes—nor on her snowy forehead. To our country dance I lured the maiden, Lured Militza,—lured her to our dances, Hoping to look on her eyes so lovely.
While they danced upon the greensward, verdant In the sunshine, sudden darkness gather’d, And the clouds broke out in fiery lightning, And the maidens all look’d up to heaven,— All the maidens—all, except Militza. She still look’d on the green grass, untrembling, While the maidens trembled as they whisper’d:
“O Militza! thou our friend and playmate, Art thou overwise—or art thou silly? Thus to look upon the grass beneath us, And not look up to the heaven above us, To the clouds, round which the lightnings wind them.”
And Militza gave this quiet answer: “I am neither overwise nor silly. Not the _Vila_, { 176} not the cloud-upgatherer; I am yet a maid—and look before me.”
HE slept beneath a poplar tree: And three young maidens cross’d the way; I listened to the lovely three, And heard them to each other say:— “Now what is dearest, love! to thee?” The eldest said—‘Young Ranko’s ring Would be to me the dearest thing.’ “No! not for me,” the second cried; “I’d choose the girdle from his side.” ‘Not I,’ the youngest said—‘In truth, I’ll rather have the sleeping youth. The ring, O sister! will grow dim, The girdle will ere long be broken; But this is an eternal token,— His love for me, and mine for him.’