And that unknowing what he did,
He leaped amid a murderous band,
And saved from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land;--
And how she wept, and clasped his knees;
And how she tended him in vain--
And ever strove to expiate
The scorn that crazed his brain;--
And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves
A dying man he lay;--
His dying words- but when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faltering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!
-