The story turns upon the magic properties attributed to the Beryl-stone, into which the pure in heart might look and read the future, and be forewarned against all danger or calamity. Rose Mary’s mother bids her read the mysterious crystal on the eve of her lover’s journey to a distant shrine, whither he rides to seek shrift for his soul before the wedding-day. The mother fears some ambush of foes by the way, and trusts the Beryl to reveal where the danger lies. Unknown to her, however, Rose Mary and her lover have joined in sin; and their sin dispossesses the good spirits from the stone, and yields their place to evil spirits, so that the spell works by contraries, and the oracle speaks falsely; the lover is betrayed and killed on the road at night. But, unknown to Rose Mary, her lover has been faithless, even to her own love. The sin is threefold,—his with her, hers with him, and his with another; and Rose Mary learns that only by an heroic forgiveness and self-sacrifice which shall cost her very life can she atone for her own and his greater sin, win pardon for both, and cast out the evil tenants from the Beryl stone. The ballad moves throughout at Rossetti’s highest poetic level; its majestic rhythm sweeps from verse to verse in a torrent of swift, strong, lyric narrative, almost too cohesive for quotation, save in such descriptive stanzas as these: “Even as she spoke, they two were ’ware Of music-notes that fell through the air; A chiming shower of strange device, Drop echoing drop, once, twice, and thrice, As rain may fall in Paradise. * * * * * * As the globe slid to its silken gloom, Once more a music rained through the room; Low it splashed like a sweet star-spray, And sobbed like tears at the heart of May, And died as laughter dies away.” But the imagery from first to last is of extraordinary tenderness and power; as, for instance, in describing the first lightning-flash before a storm,— “Ere labouring thunders heave the chain From the flood-gates of the drowning rain,” or when,— “The dawn broke dim on Rose Mary’s soul,— No hill-crown’s heavenly aureole, But a wild gleam on a shaken shoal,” and in the past night,— “She knew she had waded bosom-deep Along death’s bank in the sedge of sleep.”