Sir Harold
David Macbeth
Moir
Moir, David Macbeth (pseudonym Delta,
∆)
△
Metadata research and editing
DVPP Project Team
Fukushima
Kailey
University of Victoria Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry Project
Victoria, BC, Canada
In the public domain
Poet attribution: △ is the pseudonym adopted by David Macbeth Moir in Blackwood’s. (AC)
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
8
45
288–289
A day of strife hath fled ;
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Auto-tagged instances of cross-stanza rhyme based on existing labels.
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Sir Harold
.
A day of strife hath fled ;
The azure mantle of Twilight falls ;
The field is strewed with dead ;
But the cross is planted on Salem’s walls !
In vain the Sultan cried,
’Mid the boiling fight, for the prophet’s aid ;
And on, with swords allied,
Rushed the hosts of the Christian undismayed !
He laid him down to die,
At the foot of an aloes, a wounded knight,
Beneath the chilly sky,
And the fading traces of western light :—
With desolating force,
The night-wind moaned ’mid the forest gloom ;
And, in its sweeping course,
Uplifted the depth of his raven plume.
In garb of green, a page,
Alone, o’er his dying master hung,
His anguish to assuage,
And cool the thirst of his burning tongue ;
The frequent falling tear
He dashed in vain from his eyes of blue ;
As the knight, he loved so dear,
His painful breathing aye shorter drew !
Said the knight, “ When war is done,
And to Europe the vessels retrace the sea,
Then bear this pledge to one—
The only one that may weep for me !
Oh ! tell, that, as I sighed,
This broken pledge to my heart was pressed ;
Oh ! tell, that ere I died,
I hung o’er her magic name, and blessed !”
“ Pardon,” exclaimed the page—
“ If love will pardon to love allow ;
Ella of Hermitage
Forsook her kin, to be with thee now !—
He turns his dying eyes,
Sir Harold, and gazes on that sweet face ;—
To speak in vain he tries,
Then sank like lead in a last embrace !
She pressed her cheek to his,
To his as cold as the marble stone ;
And with one long, long kiss,
Her heart had broke, and her spirit was flown !
In the shade of the aloes tree,
In death united, the lovers lay ;
And many a tear fell free,
O’er their graves, at the dawn of day ;
And lovely o’er the tomb,
Where, side by side, these lovers repose,
Commingling their perfume,
A rose of England and Sharon grows ;
And, on the boughs above,
When fades in the west the parting light,
The dirge of faithful love
A bulbul hymns to the ear of Night.
Δ
.