Читать книгу Story-Telling Ballads. Selected and Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the Boys' and Girls' Own Reading онлайн

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Disperses wide the foamy spray,

And, echoing far o’er Crinan’s shore,

Resounds the song of Colonsay.

“Softly blow, thou western breeze,

Softly rustle through the sail!

Soothe to rest the furrowy seas,

Before my Love, sweet western gale!”

Thus, all to soothe the Chieftain’s woe,

Far from the maid he loved so dear,

The song arose, so soft and slow,

He seemed her parting sigh to hear.

The lonely deck he paces o’er,

Impatient for the rising day,

And still, from Crinan’s moonlight shore,

He turns his eyes to Colonsay.

The moonbeams crisp the curling surge,

That streaks with foam the ocean green:

While forward still the rowers urge

Their course, a female form was seen.

That Sea-maid’s form, of pearly light,

Was whiter than the downy spray,

And round her bosom, heaving bright,

Her glossy, yellow ringlets play.

Borne on a foamy-crested wave,

She reached amain the bounding prow,

Then clasping fast the Chieftain brave,

She, plunging, sought the deep below.

Ah! long beside thy feigned bier,

The monks the prayers of death shall say,