Ballad

The lady rode ’neath the strange sky’s pall
Through the leafy woods funereal,
And all the length of her moonlit way
Was wanly white as the light of day;
Solemnly rob’d she rode along,
Unmindful of their droning throng
That throng’d her shadowy path, alas,
As though to see her funeral pass;
So through the mournful forest slow
Her palfrey’s silken feet did go,
Bearing her solemnly like a god
Over the shadow-haunted sod;
She laught to see the dead desire
That even now her life should tire,
She laught to think that to the earth
They call’d her that was full of mirth,
And though before her horse’s head
Throng’d the wan legions of the dead
Wanly attempting to stop her way,
She halted not for their legions gray,
But rode through the midnight’s mystic noon
Under the far gaze of the moon.
Then out from the dying woods at last
Into the moonlit plain she passt;
The misty stars were almost dead
Sunk in the heavens overhead,
While low down in the solemn skies
The white moon wan’d as one that dies.
Solemnly through the misty air
She rode with gold gems in her hair;
Bright were her holy eyes divine,
And red her lips as the red red wine.
At last in the unceasing night
Down from her palfrey she doth alight
By the strange murmuring of the sea;
She climbs the tall stair fearlessly,
And cometh at last to her chamber high
Beneath the wide face of the sky.
At last her journey being done,
She hath her golden stays undone,
And being a little wearied,
Hath laid her naked on her bed,
Thinking to slumber like the dead.