"White his shroud as the mountain snow,
Larded all with sweet flowers,
Which bewept to the grave did go,
With true-love showers."
They well express the confused connection in the poor head, between the death of her father, and the loss of her lover; the one is foremost on her lips, but it is not difficult to see that the latter is uppermost in her thoughts. The same confusion between the two sources of her sorrow is manifested in all she says. In the lines—
"They bore him barefaced on the bier,
And in his grave rain'd many a tear;—
Fare you well, my dove"—
the two first lines seem to go for the loss of her father—the last for her lover. The same lucid confusion and imperfect concealment are still more obvious in her distribution of flowers.
Oph. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance: pray you, love, remember: and there's pansies, that's for thoughts. There's fennel for you, and columbines:—there's rue for you; and here's some for me:—we may call it, herb of grace o'Sundays:–you may wear your rue with a difference.—There's a daisy:—I would give you some violets; but they withered all when my father died:—They say, he made a good end."
Well might her passionate brother, softened for a moment by her grief and sweetness, exclaim—
"Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
She turns to favour, and to prettiness."
For never was sentimental mania more truly and more exquisitely depicted than in this effusion of mad song.
"Sie wiegte Schmerz und Sehnsucht
Und jeden Wunsch mit leisen Tönen ein.
Da wurde Leiden oft Genuss, und selbst
Das traurige Gefühl zur Harmonie."—Goëthe's Tasso.
