Is there not havoc and carnage for thee Unless thou couchest thy lance at me?
Then might thy Mary bloom blissfully still This hand should ne'er work her sorrow or ill.
What! shall Zamorna go down to the dead With blood on his hands that he wept to have shed?
The alliance is refused. Percy is crushed. Mary is dying, the rose is withering.
Its faded buds already lie To deck my coffin when I die. Bring them here--'twill not be long, 'Tis the last word of the woeful song; And the final and dying words are sung To the discord of lute strings all unstrung.
Have I crushed you, Percy? I'd raise once more The beacon-light on the rocky shore. Percy, my love is so true and deep, That though kingdoms should wail and worlds should weep, I'd fling the brand in the hissing sea, The brand that must burn unquenchably. Your rose is mine; when the sweet leaves fade, They must be the chaplet to wreathe my head The blossoms to deck my home with the dead.
Zamorna is tenderer than Heathcliff. He laments for his rose.
On its bending stalk a bonny flower In a yeoman's home close grew; It had gathered beauty from sunshine and shower, From moonlight and silent dew.
Keenly his flower the yeoman guarded, He watched it grow both day and night; From the frost, from the wind, from the storm he warded That flush of roseate light. And ever it glistened bonnilie Under the shade of the old yew-tree.
The rose is blasted, withered, blighted Its root has felt a worm, And like a heart beloved and slighted, Failed, faded, shrunk its form. Bud of beauty, bonny flower, I stole thee from thy natal bower.
And he sings of Mary, on her death-bed in her delirium. He will not believe that she is dying.
Oh! say not that her vivid dreams Are but the shattered glass Which but because more broken, gleams More brightly in the grass. Her spirit is the unfathomed lake Whose face the sudden tempests break To one tormented roar; But as the wild winds sink in peace All those disturbed waves decrease Till each far-down reflection is As life-like as before.
I cannot weep as once I wept Over my western beauty's grave.
I am speaking of a later stroke, A death the dream of yesterday, Still thinking of my latest shock, A noble friendship torn away. I feel and say that I am cast From hope, and peace, and power, and pride