Her lover's form appeared to glide,
And beckon o'er the water:
Alas! his blood that morn had dyed
Her brother's sword with slaughter.
Upon a little rock she stood,
To make her invocation:
She marked not that the rain-swoll'n flood
Was islanding her station.
The tempest mocked her feeble cry:
No saint his aid would give her:
The flood swelled high and yet more high,
And swept her down the river.
Yet oft beneath the pale moonlight,
When hollow winds are blowing,
The shadow of that maiden bright
Glides by the dark stream's flowing.
And when the storms of midnight rave,
While clouds the broad moon cover,
The wild gusts waft across the wave
The cry of, "Over, over!"
While the friar was singing, Marian was meditating:
and when he had ended she said, "Honest friar, you have misplaced
your tradition, which belongs to the aestuary of a nobler river,
where the damsel was swept away by the rising of the tide,
for which your land-flood is an indifferent substitute.
But the true tradition of this stream I think I myself possess,
and I will narrate it in your own way:
It was a friar of orders free,
A friar of Rubygill:
At the greenwood-tree a vow made he,
But he kept it very ill:
A vow made he of chastity,
But he kept it very ill.
He kept it, perchance, in the conscious shade
Of the bounds of the forest wherein it was made:
But he roamed where he listed, as free as the wind,
And he left his good vow in the forest behind:
For its woods out of sight were his vow out of mind,
With the friar of Rubygill.
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