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As one scarce less forlorn,

Dying abroad and it seems apart

From him who had ceased to share her heart,

And ever mourning over the feud,

The household Fury sprinkled with blood

By which our houses are torn:

How strange was what she said,

When only Maud and the brother
Hung over her dying bed-

That Maud's dark father and mine

Had bound us one to the other,

Betrothed us over their wine,

On the day when Maud was born;

Seal'd her mine from her first sweet breath.

Mine, mine by a right, from birth till death,

Mine, mine-our fathers have sworn.

5.

But the true blood spilt had in it a heat

To dissolve the precious seal on a bond,

That, if left uncancell'd, had been. so sweet:

And none of us thought of a something beyond, A desire that awoke in the heart of the child,

As it were a duty done to the tomb,

To be friends for her sake, to be reconciled;
And I was cursing them and my doom,
And letting a dangerous thought run wild
While often abroad in the fragrant gloom
Of foreign churches-I see her there,
Bright English lily, breathing a prayer

To be friends, to be reconciled!

6.

But then what a flint is he !

Abroad, at Florence, at Rome,
I find whenever she touch'd on me
This brother had laugh'd her down,
And at last, when each came home,
He had darken'd into a frown,
Chid her, and forbid her to speak

To me, her friend of the years before;

And this was what had redden'd her cheek

When I bow'd to her on the moor.

7.

Yet Maud, altho' not blind

To the faults of his heart and mind,

I see she cannot but love him,

And says he is rough but kind,

And wishes me to approve him,

And tells me, when she lay

Sick once, with a fear of worse,

That he left his wine and horses and play,

Sat with her, read to her, night and day,

And tended her like a nurse.

8.

Kind? but the deathbed desire

Spurn'd by this heir of the liar—

Rough but kind? yet I know

He has plotted against me in this,

That he plots against me still.

Kind to Maud that were not amiss.

Well, rough but kind; why let it be so :

For shall not Maud have her will?

9.

For, Maud, so tender and true,

As long as my life endures

I feel I shall owe you a debt,

That I never can hope to pay;

And if ever I should forget

That I owe this debt to you

And for your sweet sake to yours;

O then, what then shall I say —

If ever I should forget,

May God make me more wretched

Than ever I have been yet!

10.

So now I have sworn to bury

All this dead body of hate,

I feel so free and so clear

By the loss of that dead weight,

That I should grow light-headed, I fear,

Fantastically merry;

But that her brother comes, like a blight

On my fresh hope, to the Hall to-night.

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