Her marriage eve--so had her father said-- Should Rudolf come successful from the hunt. So pleased was I with what I'd seen him do, The trial of skill superfluous seemed, and so Was on the bare brink of announcing, when Out of the western heaven's deepening red,-- Like a white message dropped by rosy lips,-- A wild dove clove the luminous winds and there, Upon that limb, a peaceful moment sat. Then I, "Thy rifle, Rudolf! pierce its head!" Cried pointing, "and chief-forester art thou!"-- Why did he falter with a face as strange As a dark omen? did his soul foresee What was to be with tragic prescience?-- What a bad dream it all seems now!--Again I see him aim. Again I hear the cry, "My dove! O Rudolf, do not kill my dove!" And from the crowd, like some sweet dove herself, A fluttering whiteness, came our Ilsabe-- Too late! the rifle cracked ... The unhurt dove Rose, beating frightened wings--but Ilsabe!... The sight! the sight!... lay smitten; a red stain, Sullying the pureness of her bridal bodice, Showed where the ball had pierced her through the heart. And Rudolf?--Ah, of him you still would know?-- When he beheld this thing that he had done, Why he went mad--I say--but others not. An hour he raved of how her life had paid For the unholy bullets he had used, And how his soul was three times lost and damned. I say that he went mad and fled forthwith Into the haunted Harz.--Some say, to die The prey of demons of the Dummburg ruin. I, one of those less superstitious, say, He in the Bodé--from that blackened rock,-- Whereon were found his hunting-cap and gun,-- The Devil's Dancing Place, did leap and die. My Lady of Verne It all comes back as the end draws near; All comes back like a tale of old! Shall I tell you all? Will you lend an ear? You, with your face so stern and cold; You, who have found me dying here ... Lady Leona's villa at Verne-- You have walked its terraces, where the fount And statue gleam and the fluted urn; Its world-old elms, that are avenues gaunt Of shadow and flame when the West is a-burn. 'T is a lonely region of tarns and trees, And hollow hills that circle the West; Haunted of rooks and the far-off sea's Immemorial vague unrest; A land of sorrowful memories. A gray sad land, where the wind has its will, And the sun its way with the fruits and flowers; Where ever the one all night is shrill, And ever the other all day brings hours Of glimmering silence that dead days fill. A gray sad land, where her girlhood grew To womanhood proud, that the hill-winds seemed To give their heart, like melody, to; And the stars, their soul, like a dream undreamed-- The only glad thing that the sad land knew.