полная версия

Шарлотта Бронте
Richard Coeur de Lion and Blondel

 
A wand’ring minstrel, from his shoulders hung
A harp, sweet instrument of melody.
He paus’d awhile, beneath the turret high,
Then took his harp, and all the sweet chords swept,
Till a sound swell’d beneath the silent sky,
And holiest music, on the charmed air crept,
Waked from the magic strings, Where till that hour they slept.
 
 
O! how that wild strain o’er the river swelled,
And mingled with its gentle murmuring,
From the true fount of Song divine, it welled;
Music’s own simple undefiled spring;
Notes rose, and dyed such as the wild birds sing
In the lone-wood, or the far lonelier sky.
O! none but Blondel but the minstrel king
Could waken such transcendant melody;
Sweet as a fairy’s lute, soft as a passing sigh.
 
 
The strain he sung, was some antique romance,
Some long forgotten song of other years;
Born in the cloudless clime of sunny France,
Where Earth, in vernal loveliness appears;
Where the bright grape distils its purple tears;
And clear streams flow, and dim, blue hills arise
A gleaming crown of snows Each mountain wears;
And there are cities, ’neath her starry skies,
As fair as ever blest, with beauty, mortal eyes.
 

Blondel’s Song

 
The moonlight; sleeps low, on the hills of Provence;
The stars are all tracking, their paths in the sky:
How softly, and brightly, their golden orbs glance,
Where the long shining waves, of the silver Rhone lie
 
 
The tow’rs of De Courcy rise high in the beam,
From sky to earth trembling, so lustrous and pale,