The Christ-child sits on high: He looks through the merry blue sky; He holds in His hand a bright lily-band, For the boys who for Him die. On holy Mary's arm, Wrapt safe from terror and harm, Lulled by the breeze in the paradise trees, Their souls sleep soft and warm. Knight David, young and true, The giant Soldan slew, And our arms so light, for the Christ-child's right, Like noble deeds can do. [Young Knights pass.] The rich East blooms fragrant before us; All Fairyland beckons us forth; We must follow the crane in her flight o'er the main, From the frosts and the moors of the North. Our sires in the youth of the nations Swept westward through plunder and blood, But a holier quest calls us back to the East, We fight for the kingdom of God. Then shrink not, and sigh not, fair ladies, The red cross which flames on each arm and each shield, Through philtre and spell, and the black charms of hell, Shall shelter our true love in camp and in field. [Old Monk, looking after them.] Jerusalem, Jerusalem! The burying place of God! Why gay and bold, in steel and gold, O'er the paths where Christ hath trod? [The Scene closes.] ACT III SCENE I A chamber in the Wartburg. Elizabeth sitting in widow's weeds; Guta and Isentrudis by her. Isen. What? Always thus, my Princess? Is this wise, By day with fasts and ceaseless coil of labour; About the ungracious poor--hands, eyes, feet, brain O'ertasked alike--'mid sin and filth, which make Each sense a plague--by night with cruel stripes, And weary watchings on the freezing stone, To double all your griefs, and burn life's candle, As village gossips say, at either end? The good book bids the heavy-hearted drink, And so forget their woe. Eliz. 'Tis written too In that same book, nurse, that the days shall come When the bridegroom shall be taken away--and then-- Then shall they mourn and fast: I needed weaning From sense and earthly joys; by this way only May I win God to leave in mine own hands My luxury's cure: oh! I may bring him back, By working out to its full depth the chastening The need of which his loss proves: I but barter Less grief for greater--pain for widowhood. Isen. And death for life--your cheeks are wan and sharp As any three-days' moon--you are shifting always Uneasily and stiff, now, on your seat, As from some secret pain. Eliz. Why watch me thus? You cannot know--and yet you know too much-- I tell you, nurse, pain's comfort, when the flesh Aches with the aching soul in harmony, And even in woe, we are one: the heart must speak Its passion's strangeness in strange symbols out, Or boil, till it bursts inly. Guta. Yet, methinks, You might have made this widowed solitude A holy rest--a spell of soft gray weather, Beneath whose fragrant dews all tender thoughts Might bud and burgeon.