You thought to break a country heart Lady Clara Vere de Vere, I know you proud to bear your name, Your pride is yet no mate for mine, Too proud to care from whence I came. Nor would I break for your sweet sake A heart that dotes on truer charms. A simple maiden in her flower Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Some meeker pupil you must find, I could not stoop to such a mind. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, You put strange memories in my head. Not thrice your branching limes have blown Since I beheld young Laurence dead. O, your sweet eyes, your low replies! A great enchantress you may be; But there was that across his throat Which you had hardly cared to see. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, When thus he met his mother's view, She had the passions of her kind, She spake some certain truths of you. Indeed I heard one bitter word That scarce is fit for you to hear; Her manners had not that repose Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, There stands a spectre in your hall; The guilt of blood is at your door; You changed a wholesome heart to gall. You held your course without remorse, To make him trust his modest worth, And, last, you fix'd a vacant stare, And slew him with your noble birth. ! Good-night, good-night, when I have said good-night for evermore, And you see me carried out from the threshold of the door, Don't let Effie come to see me till my grave be growing green, She'll be a better child to you than ever I have been. She'll find my garden-tools upon the granary floor. Let her take 'em, they are hers; I shall never garden more; But tell her, when I'm gone, to train the rosebush that I set About the parlor-window and the box of mignonette. Good-night, sweet mother; call me before the day is born. All night I lie awake, but I fall asleep at |