Afterwards she sang alone. For contrast, or in the pride of
swaying moods by her voice, she chose a mournful song that drifted
along in a minor chant, sad as a wind that dirges:
"Oh, let me go!
Around spin wreaths of snow;
The dark earth sleeps below.
"Far up the plain
Moans on a voice of pain:
'Where shall my babe be lain?'
"In my white breast
Lay the sweet life to rest!
Lay, where it can lie best!
"'Hush! hush its cries!
Dense night is on the skies:
Two stars are in thine eyes.'
"Come, babe, away!
But lie thou till dawn be grey,
Who must be dead by day.
"This cannot last;
But, ere the sickening blast,
All sorrow shall be past;
"And kings shall be
Low bending at thy knee,
Worshipping life from thee.
"For men long sore
To hope of what's before,--
To leave the things of yore.
"Mine, and not thine,
How deep their jewels shine!
Peace laps thy head, not mine."
Old Trella came tottering from her corner, shaken to additional
palsy by an aroused memory. She strained her dim eyes towards the
singer, and then bent her head, that the one ear yet sensible to
sound might avail of every note. At the close, groping forward,
she murmured with the high-pitched quaver of old age:
"So she sang, my Thora; my last and brightest. What is she like,
she whose voice is like my dead Thora's? Are her eyes blue?"
"Blue as the sky.
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