Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.
Eclogue
Thomas Chatterton (17521770)
Elinoure and Juga
O
N Rudborne bank two pining maidens sat,
Their tears fast dripping to the water clear; | Each one lamenting for her absent mate, | Who at Saint Alban’s shook the murdering spear. | The nut-brown Elinoure to Juga fair | Did speak acroole, with languishment of eyne, | Like drops of pearly dew, glistened the quivering brine. Elin. | O gentle Juga! hear my sad complaint, | To fight for York, my love is dight in steel; | O may no sanguine stain the white rose paint, | May good Saint Cuthbert watch Sir Robert wele; | Much more than death in phantasy I feel; | See, see! upon the ground he bleeding lies; | Infuse some juice of life, or else my dear love dies. Juga. | Sisters in sorrow, on this daisied bank, | Where melancholy broods, we will lament, | Be wet with morning dew and even dank; | Like levin’d oaks in each the other bent, | Or like forsaken halls of merriment, | Whose ghastly ruins hold the train of fright, | Where deadly ravens bark, and owlets wake the night. Elin. | No more the bagpipe shall awake the morn, | The minstrel-dance, good cheer, and morris-play; | No more the ambling palfrey and the horn | Shall from the lessel rouse the fox away. | I’ll seek the forest all the livelong day; | All night among the graved churchyard will go, | And to the passing sprites relate my tale of woe. Juga. | When murky clouds do hang upon the leme | Of leden moon, in silver mantles dight; | The tripping fairies weave the golden dream | Of happiness, which flieth with the night. | Then (but the saints forbid!) if to a sprite | Sir Richard’s form is lyped, I’ll hold distraught, | His bleeding clay-cold corse, and die each day in thought. Elin. | Ah! woe-lamenting words! what words can shew? | Thou glassy river, on thy bank may bleed | Champions, whose blood will with thy waters flow, | And Rudborne stream be Rudborne stream indeed! | Haste, gentle Juga, trip it o’er the mead | To know, or whether we must wail again, | Or with our fallen knights be mingled on the plain.
| So saying, like two lightning-blasted trees, | Or twain of clouds that holdeth stormy rain, | They movèd gently o’er the dewy mees, | To where Saint Alban’s holy shrines remain. | There did they find that both their knights were slain, | Distraught, they wandered to swoll’n Rudborne’s side, | Yellèd their deadly knell, sank in the waves, and died.
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