书城英文图书加拿大学生文学读本(第5册)
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第41章 ROSABELLE

O listen,listen,ladies gay!

No haughty feat of arms I tell;Soft is the note,and sad the layThat mourns the lovely Rosabelle.

“Moor,moor the barge,ye gallant crew!

And,gentle ladye,deign to stay!Rest thee in Castle Ravensheuch,Nor tempt the stormy firth today.

“The blackening wave is edged with white;To inch and rock the seamews fly;The fishers have heard the WaterSprite,Whose screams forebode that wreck is nigh.

A wet shroud swathed round ladye gay;Then stay thee,Fair,in Ravensheuch;Why cross the gloomy firth today?Tis not because Lord Lindesay’s heir Tonight at Roslin leads the ball,But that my ladyemother thereSits lonely in her castlehall.

“Tis not because the ring they ride,And Lindesay at the ring rides well,But that my sire the wine will chide If ’tis not fill‘d by Rosabelle.”O’er Roslin all that dreary nightA wondrous blaze was seen to gleam;‘Twas broader than the watchfire’s light,And redder than the bright moonbeam.

It ruddied all the copsewood glen;’Twas seen from Dryden‘s groves of oak,And seen from cavern’d Hawthornden.

Seem‘d all on fire that chapel proud,Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffin‘d lie,Each Baron,for a sable shroud,Sheathed in his iron panoply.

Seem’d all on fire within,around,Deep sacristy and altar‘s pale ;Shone every pillar foliagebound,And glimmer’d all the dead men‘s mail.

Blazed battlement and pinnet high,Blazed every rosecarved buttress fairSo still they blaze,when fate is nighThe lordly line of high Saint Clair.

There are twenty of Roslin’s barons bold Lie buried within that proud chapelle;Each one the holy vault doth holdBut the sea holds lovely Rosabelle!

And each Saint Clair was buried there With candle,with book,and with knell;But the seacaves rung,and the wild winds sung The dirge of lovely Rosabelle!