The Bride of the Dead

MOTHER dear, thy happy heart is weetless of my dolour.
Why a wedding robe for me, and why its purple colour?
This proud purple shall show paler in the day dawn early,
All night long my tears thereon shall fall so fast and pearly!

But if Morning's golden sun arise and find me sleeping,
If the robe remain unblanched, for all my weary weeping,
Carl shall come to aid me from his bed below the billow,
And his locks shall steep afresh my purple and my pillow.

For he lies where gentle waters watch as friends above him;
And when these shall whisper him that she who vowed to love him
Trembles lest the jealous heart that in his youth he gave her
Now forsake her bosom, he will rise and come to save her.

Mother dear, I go to church — but thence into a far land.
Give my bridegroom only this funereal cypress garland.
All that he shall find will be a maiden's corpse to-morrov
Stretched before the altar where the widows kneel ii sorrow.