Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (distant reading .txt) 📖

in a voice, though not powerful, marvellously sweet and clear, and well adapted to the simple fashion of the words and melody, she sang the following stanzas:—

Lay of the Lady of Provence.

1. Ah, why art thou sad, my heart? Why Darksome and lonely? Frowns the face of the happy sky Over thee only? Ah me, ah me! Render to joy the earth! Grief shuns, not envies, Mirth; But leave one quiet spot, Where Mirth may enter not, To sigh, Ah, me!— Ah me. 2. As a bird, though the sky be clear, Feels the storm lower; My soul bodes the tempest near, In the sunny hour; Ah me, ah me! Be glad while yet we may! I bid thee, my heart, be gay; And still I know not why,— Thou answerest with a sigh, (Fond heart!) Ah me!— Ah me! 3. As this twilight o’er the skies, Doubt brings the sorrow; Who knows when the daylight dies, What waits the morrow? Ah me, ah me! Be blithe, be blithe, my lute, Thy strings will soon be mute; Be blithe—hark! while it dies, The note forewarning, sighs Its last—Ah me! Ah me!

“My own Adeline—my sweetest night-bird,” half-whispered Montreal, and softly approaching, he threw himself at his lady’s feet—“thy song is too sad for this golden eve.”

“No sound ever went to the heart,” said Adrian, “whose arrow was not feathered by sadness. True sentiment, Montreal, is twin with melancholy, though not with gloom.”

The lady looked softly and approvingly up at Adrian’s face; she was pleased with its expression; she was pleased yet more with words of which women rather than men would acknowledge the truth. Adrian returned the look with one of deep and eloquent sympathy and respect; in fact, the short story he had heard from Montreal had interested him deeply in her; and never to the brilliant queen, to whose court he was bound, did his manner wear so chivalric and earnest a homage as it did to that lone and ill-fated lady on the twilight shores of Terracina.

Adeline blushed slightly and sighed; and then, to break the awkwardness of a pause which had stolen over them, as Montreal, unheeding the last remark of Adrian, was tuning the strings of the lute, she said—“Of course the Signor di Castello shares the universal enthusiasm for Petrarch?”

“Ay,” cried Montreal; “my lady is Petrarch mad, like the rest of them: but all I know is, that never did belted knight and honest lover woo in such fantastic and tortured strains.”

“In Italy,” answered Adrian, “common language is exaggeration;—but even your own Troubadour poetry might tell you that love, ever seeking a new language of its own, cannot but often run into what to all but lovers seems distortion and conceit.”

“Come, dear Signor,” said Montreal, placing the lute in Adrian’s hands, “let Adeline be the umpire between us, which music—yours or mine—can woo the more blandly.”

“Ah,” said Adrian, laughing; “I fear me, Sir Knight, you have already bribed the umpire.”

Montreal’s eyes and Adeline’s met; and in that gaze Adeline forgot all her sorrows.

With a practised and skilful hand, Adrian touched the strings; and selecting a song which was less elaborate than those mostly in vogue amongst his countrymen, though still conceived in the Italian spirit, and in accordance with the sentiment he had previously expressed to Adeline, he sang as follows:—

Love’s Excuse for Sadness.

Chide not, beloved, if oft with thee I feel not rapture wholly; For aye the heart that’s fill’d with love, Runs o’er in melancholy. To streams that glide in noon, the shade From summer skies is given; So, if my breast reflects the cloud, ‘Tis but the cloud of heaven! Thine image glass’d within my soul So well the mirror keepeth; That, chide me not, if with the light The shadow also sleepeth.

“And now,” said Adrian, as he concluded, “the lute is to you: I but preclude your prize.”

The Provencal laughed, and shook his head.—“With any other umpire, I had had my lute broken on my own head, for my conceit in provoking such a rival; but I must not shrink from a contest I have myself provoked, even though in one day twice defeated.” And with that, in a deep and exquisitely melodious voice, which wanted only more scientific culture to have challenged any competition, the Knight of St. John poured forth:

The Lay of the Troubadour.

1. Gentle river, the moonbeam is hush’d on thy tide, On thy pathway of light to my lady I glide. My boat, where the stream laves the castle, I moor,— All at rest save the maid and her young Troubadour! As the stars to the waters that bore My bark, to my spirit thou art; Heaving yet, see it bound to the shore, So moor’d to thy beauty my heart,— Bel’ amie, bel’ amie, bel’ amie! 2. Wilt thou fly from the world? It hath wealth for the vain; But Love breaks his bond when there’s gold in the chain; Wilt thou fly from the world? It hath courts for the proud;— But Love, born in caves, pines to death in the crowd. Were this bosom thy world, dearest one, Thy world could not fail to be bright; For thou shouldst thyself be its sun, And what spot could be dim in thy light— Bel’ amie, bel’ amie, bel’ amie? 3. The rich and the great woo thee dearest; and poor, Though his fathers were princes, thy young Troubadour! But his heart never quail’d save to thee, his adored,— There’s no guile in his lute, and no stain on his sword. Ah, I reck not what sorrows I know, Could I still on thy solace confide; And I care not, though earth be my foe, If thy soft heart be found by my side,— Bel’ amie, bel’ amie, bel’ amie! 4. The maiden she blush’d, and the maiden she sighed, Not a cloud in the sky, not a gale on the tide; But though tempest had raged on the wave and the wind, That castle, methinks, had been still left behind! Sweet lily, though bow’d by the blast, (To this bosom transplanted) since then, Wouldst thou change, could we call the past, To the rock from thy garden again— Bel’ amie, bel’ amie, bel’ amie?

Thus they alternated the time with converse and song, as the wooded hills threw their sharp, long shadows over the sea; while from many a mound of waking flowers, and many a copse of citron and orange, relieved by the dark and solemn aloe, stole the summer breeze, laden with mingled odours; and, over the seas, coloured by the slow-fading hues of purple and rose, that the sun had long bequeathed to the twilight, flitted the gay fireflies that sparkle along that enchanted coast. At length, the moon slowly rose above the dark forest-steeps, gleaming on the gay pavilion and glittering pennon of Montreal,—on the verdant sward,—the polished mail of the soldiers, stretched on the grass in various groups, half-shaded by oaks and cypress, and the war-steeds grazing peaceably together—a wild mixture of the Pastoral and the Iron time.