Sing will I
The miserable woe
That bids me grieve and sigh.

Ay, but what is here to lend
Ear to my lament?
What is here can comprehend
My dull discontent?
Neither grass nor reed,
Nor the ripples heed,
Flowing by,
While the stream with speed
Hastens from my eye.

Vainly does my wounded heart
Hope, alas, to heal;
Seeking, to allay its smart,
Things that cannot feel.
Better should my pain
Bitterly complain,
Crying shrill,
To thee who dost constrain
My spirit to such ill.

Goddess, who shalt never die,
List to what I say;
Thou who makest me to lie
Weak beneath thy sway,
If my life must know
Ending at thy blow,
Cruellest!
Own it perished so
But at thy behest.

Lo! my face may all men see
Slowly pine and fade,
E'en as ice doth melt and flee
Near a furnace laid.
Yet the burning ray
Wasting me away
Passion's glow,
Wakens no display
Of pity for my woe.

Yet does every neighbour tree,
Every rocky wall,
This my sorrow know and see;
So, in brief, doth all
Nature know aright
This my sorry plight;
Thou alone
Takest thy delight
To hear me cry and moan.

But if it be thy will,
To see tormented still
Wretched me,
Then let my woful ill
Immortal be."

This last verse died away as if the queen were exhausted, and at the same
time the mandolin slipped from her hands, and would have fallen to the
ground had not Mary Seyton thrown herself on her knees and prevented it.
The young girl remained thus at her mistress's feet for some time, gazing
at her silently, and as she saw that she was losing herself more and more
in gloomy reverie--

"Have those lines brought back to your Majesty some sad remembrance?" she
asked hesitatingly.

"Oh, yes," answered the queen; "they reminded me of the unfortunate being
who composed them."

"And may I, without indiscretion, inquire of your grace who is their
author?"

"Alas! he was a noble, brave, and handsome young man, with a faithful
heart and a hot head, who would defend me to-day, if I had defended him
then; but his boldness seemed to me rashness, and his fault a crime.
What was to be done? I did not love him. Poor Chatelard! I was very
cruel to him."

"But you did not prosecute him, it was your brot