National Lyrics, and Songs for Music/The Brigand Leader and his Wife
THE BRIGAND LEADER AND HIS WIFE.
SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF EASTLAKE'S.
Dark chieftain of the heath and height!
Wild feaster on the hills by night!
Seest thou the stormy sunset's glow
Flung back by glancing spears below?
Now for one strife of stern despair!
The foe hath tracked thee to thy lair.
Thou, against whom the voice of blood
Hath risen from rock and lonely wood;
And in whose dreams a moan should be,
Not of the water, nor the tree;
Haply thine own last hour is nigh,—
Yet shalt thou not forsaken die.
There's one that pale beside thee stands,
More true than all thy mountain bands!
She will not shrink in doubt and dread,
When the balls whistle round thy head:
Nor leave thee, though thy closing eye
No longer may to her's reply.
Oh! many a soft and quiet grace
Hath faded from her form and face;
And many a thought, the fitting guest
Of woman's meek religious breast,
Hath perished in her wanderings wide,
Through the deep forests by thy side.
Yet, mournfully surviving all,
A flower upon a ruin's wall,
A friendless thing whose lot is cast,
Of lovely ones to be the last;
Sad, but unchanged through good and ill,
Thine is her lone devotion still.
And oh! not wholly lost the heart
Where that undying love hath part;
Not worthless all, though far and long
From home estranged, and guided wrong;
Yet may its depths by heaven be stirred,
Its prayer for thee be poured and heard!