Volume II Part 9 (1/2)

II.

While down through the wood rides that fair company, The youths with the courts.h.i.+p, the maids with the glee, Till the chapel-cross opens to sight, and at once All the maids sigh demurely and think for the nonce, ”And so endeth a wooing!”

III.

And the bride and the bridegroom are leading the way, With his hand on her rein, and a word yet to say; Her dropt eyelids suggest the soft answers beneath, And the little quick smiles come and go with her breath When she sigheth or speaketh.

IV.

And the tender bride-mother breaks off unaware From an Ave, to think that her daughter is fair, Till in nearing the chapel and glancing before, She seeth her little son stand at the door: Is it play that he seeketh?

V.

Is it play, when his eyes wander innocent-wild And sublimed with a sadness unfitting a child?

He trembles not, weeps not; the pa.s.sion is done, And calmly he kneels in their midst, with the sun On his head like a glory.

VI.

”O fair-featured maids, ye are many!” he cried, ”But in fairness and vileness who matcheth the bride?

O brave-hearted youths, ye are many! but whom For the courage and woe can ye match with the groom As ye see them before ye?”

VII.

Out spake the bride's mother, ”The vileness is thine If thou shame thine own sister, a bride at the shrine!”

Out spake the bride's lover, ”The vileness be mine If he shame mine own wife at the hearth or the shrine And the charge be unproved.

VIII.

”Bring the charge, prove the charge, brother! speak it aloud: Let thy father and hers hear it deep in his shroud!”

--”O father, thou seest, for dead eyes can see, How she wears on her bosom a BROWN ROSARY, O my father beloved!”

IX.

Then outlaughed the bridegroom, and outlaughed withal Both maidens and youths by the old chapel-wall: ”So she weareth no love-gift, kind brother,” quoth he, ”She may wear an she listeth a brown rosary, Like a pure-hearted lady.”

X.

Then swept through the chapel the long bridal train; Though he spake to the bride she replied not again: On, as one in a dream, pale and stately she went Where the altar-lights burn o'er the great sacrament, Faint with daylight, but steady.

XI.

But her brother had pa.s.sed in between them and her, And calmly knelt down on the high-altar stair-- Of an infantine aspect so stern to the view That the priest could not smile on the child's eyes of blue As he would for another.

XII.

He knelt like a child marble-sculptured and white That seems kneeling to pray on the tomb of a knight, With a look taken up to each iris of stone From the greatness and death where he kneeleth, but none From the face of a mother.

XIII.

”In your chapel, O priest, ye have wedded and shriven Fair wives for the hearth, and fair sinners for heaven; But this fairest my sister, ye think now to wed, Bid her kneel where she standeth, and shrive her instead: O shrive her and wed not!”