Page:The Story and Song of Black Roderick.djvu/50

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THE STORY AND SONG OF

scarce could stand, and, stretching her arms towards the great purple hills that surrounded her father's far home, she said towards it:

‘Why didst thou call me back since thou hast let me go from the sight of the heights that would have been always a prayer to uplift my soul? Ahone! that thy voice was loud enough to follow and give me unrest, that whispered always of my father's house and the valley of my home. So must I come each eve upon this hill to look upon it from my loneliness.

‘Unloved am I, and unwished for, by him whom I have wedded. So my heart dieth within my breast, and my soul trembleth on the brink of my grave.

‘Here upon the mountains, unprayed for and uncoffined, shall my body lie, for thy voice hath called me forth.

‘Here my black sins shall see and pursue me even to destruction; but in the city I could have escaped with the crowding souls that confuse Death to count.’

Then, as a remembrance of her sins came