Classic Poem

XXXI.

There needed no voices: Prince Amadis read
A dream in that show interpreted;
He strode the fair cygnet, and rose from the ground
With those wild white swans on a voyage bound.

XXXII.

Young Prince! they will search for thee all through the night,
And the lake and the bush will gleam wan with torch-light;
And there will be weeping and wailing then,
If monarchs have hearts like other men.

XXXIII.

But away and away in the midnight blue
That fleet of white creatures went steering through;
And away and away through the sweet day-break,
From the white Alps flashed, their road they take:

XXXIV.

Through the tingling noon and the evening vapor,
Which Hesper lights with his little taper,
Through the tremulous smiles of moonlight mirth,
And the balmy descents of dew to the earth.

XXXV.

Through the calms, through the winds, when the hailstones ring,
The convoy passed with untiring wing,
And oft from their course for hours they drove,
As though they winnowed the air for love.

XXXVI.

And now they would mount and now they would stoop,
And almost to earth or river droop,
And harshly would pipe through the sheer delight
Of their boisterous wings, and their strength of flight.

XXXVII.

They saw the young Save in the next night's moon,
They were over Belgrade by the afternoon,
And ere the sun set their journey was o'er
On a willow-isle by the Danube's shore.

XXXVIII.

They left the young Prince, (for their mission was done,)
There on the green willow-island alone;
And, in their hoarse language they bade him farewell,
And swept o'er the sun-bleached Bulgarian fell.

XXXIX.

More and more sadly as daylight died,
The breeze-troubled marsh-plants sobbed and sighed,
And the pulse of the river with panting sound
Beat in the swamps and the hollows round.

XL.

But the stream travelled on like a pilgrim weary
In search of his eastern sanctuary,
Through the heart of old Europe guiding his floods
From beneath the green boughs of the Freybourg woods.