This silent spot tradition old Had peopled with the spectral dead. For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told That a hellish shape at midnight led _150 The ghost of a youth with hoary hair, And sate on the seat beside him there, Till a naked child came wandering by, When the fiend would change to a lady fair! A fearful tale! The truth was worse: _155 For here a sister and a brother Had solemnized a monstrous curse, Meeting in this fair solitude: For beneath yon very sky, Had they resigned to one another _160 Body and soul. The multitude: Tracking them to the secret wood, Tore limb from limb their innocent child, And stabbed and trampled on its mother; But the youth, for God's most holy grace, _165 A priest saved to burn in the market-place. Duly at evening Helen came To this lone silent spot, From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow So much of sympathy to borrow _170 As soothed her own dark lot. Duly each evening from her home, With her fair child would Helen come To sit upon that antique seat, While the hues of day were pale; _175 And the bright boy beside her feet Now lay, lifting at intervals His broad blue eyes on her; Now, where some sudden impulse calls Following. He was a gentle boy _180 And in all gentle sorts took joy; Oft in a dry leaf for a boat, With a small feather for a sail, His fancy on that spring would float, If some invisible breeze might stir _185 Its marble calm: and Helen smiled Through tears of awe on the gay child, To think that a boy as fair as he, In years which never more may be, By that same fount, in that same wood, _190 The like sweet fancies had pursued; And that a mother, lost like her, Had mournfully sate watching him. Then all the scene was wont to swim Through the mist of a burning tear. _195