Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/442

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
434
ONCE A WEEK.
[Oct. 11, 1862.


imagined: and she sat and beheld him, and many times fell into a little quick laughter for her great pleasure and delight.

Then came Amaury suddenly into the chamber, and caught his sword into his hand, and said to her:

“Ah, wicked leman, now at length is come the end of thy horrible love and of thy life at once;” and smote her through the two sides with his sword, so that she fell down, and with a great sigh full unwillingly delivered up her spirit, which was no sooner fled out of her perishing body, but immediately the soul departed also out of the body of her lover, and he became as one that had been all those days dead. And the next day the people caused their two bodies to be burned openly in the place where witches were used to be burned: and it is reported by some that an evil spirit was seen to come out of the mouth of Jacques d’Aspremont, with a most pitiful cry, like the cry of a hurt beast. By which thing all men knew that the soul of this woman, for the folly of her sinful and most strange affection, was thus evidently given over to the delusion of the evil one and the pains of condemnation.




HEIMKEHR (THE RETURN).

FROM THE GERMAN OF EMMANUEL GEIBEL.

That was a day of bitter smart,
The day that witnessed our farewell,
When thou didst turn thee from a heart
Thine own, and passing rich as well.

I know too well my fault was great,
Yet less than that thy memory kept,
And I have borne its woeful weight,
And tears of blood my sin hath wept.

And years have passed, and now my star
Conducts me near thy paths once more,
I feel anew my bosom’s war,
The joy and pain well known of yore.

Methinks from thee I would not sever,
And I would speak the word “Forgive!”
For, though the world would part us ever,
Thou’rt loved and lovely, and I live.
 
If to new aims I turned away,
Through joy and sorrow struggling free,
Yet through life’s various hazard-play
My thought would still come home to thee.

I strove for pleasure, honour, truth,
Prizes I won, and wear them now;
Yet boon is none so rich as youth—
The boon of youth to me wert thou.

G. C. Swayne.