ld yew-tree.

* * * * *

The rose is blasted, withered, blighted
Its root has felt a worm,
And like a heart beloved and slighted,
Failed, faded, shrunk its form.
Bud of beauty, bonny flower,
I stole thee from thy natal bower.

I was the worm that withered thee....

And he sings of Mary, on her death-bed in her delirium. He will not
believe that she is dying.

Oh! say not that her vivid dreams
Are but the shattered glass
Which but because more broken, gleams
More brightly in the grass.
Her spirit is the unfathomed lake
Whose face the sudden tempests break
To one tormented roar;
But as the wild winds sink in peace
All those disturbed waves decrease
Till each far-down reflection is
As life-like as before.

Her death is not the worst.

I cannot weep as once I wept
Over my western beauty's grave.

* * * * *

I am speaking of a later stroke,
A death the dream of yesterday,
Still thinking of my latest shock,
A noble friendship torn away.
I feel and say that I am cast
From hope, and peace, and power, and pride

* * * * *

Without a voice to speak to you
Save that deep gong which tolled my doom,
And made my dread iniquity
Look darker than my deepest gloom.

But the crucial passage (for the sources) is the scene in the yeoman's
hall where Zamorna comes to Percy. He comes stealthily.

That step he might have used before
When stealing on to lady's bower,
Forth at the same still twilight hour,
For the moon now bending mild above
Showed him a son of war and love.
His eye was full of that sinful fire
Which oft unhallowed passions light.
It spoke of quickly kindled ire,
Of love too warm, and wild, and bright.
Bright, but yet sullied, love that could never
Bring good in rising, leave peace in decline,
Woe to the gifted, crime to the giver....

* * * * *

Now from his curled and shining hair,
Circling the brow of marble fair,
His dark, keen eyes on Percy gaze
With stern and yet repenting rays.

* * * * *

He loves Percy whose rose was his, and he hates him, as Heathcliff might
have loved and hated, but with less brutality.

Young savage! how he bends above
The object of his wrath and love,
How tenderly his fingers press
T