| |
| PRAY why are you so bare, so bare, | |
| Oh, bough of the old oak-tree; | |
| And why, when I go through the shade you throw, | |
| Runs a shudder over me? | |
| |
| My leaves were green as the best, I trow, | 5 |
| And sap ran free in my veins, | |
| But I saw in the moonlight dim and weird | |
| A guiltless victim’s pains. | |
| |
| I bent me down to hear his sigh; | |
| I shook with his gurgling moan, | 10 |
| And I trembled sore when they rode away, | |
| And left him here alone. | |
| |
| They’d charged him with the old, old crime, | |
| And set him fast in jail: | |
| Oh, why does the dog howl all night long, | 15 |
| And why does the night wind wail? | |
| |
| He prayed his prayer and he swore his oath, | |
| And he raised his hand to the sky; | |
| But the beat of hoofs smote on his ear, | |
| And the steady tread drew nigh. | 20 |
| |
| Who is it rides by night, by night, | |
| Over the moonlit road? | |
| And what is the spur that keeps the pace, | |
| What is the galling goad? | |
| |
| And now they beat at the prison door, | 25 |
| “Ho, keeper, do not stay! | |
| We are friends of him whom you hold within, | |
| And we fain would take him away | |
| |
| “From those who ride fast on our heels | |
| With mind to do him wrong; | 30 |
| They have no care for his innocence, | |
| And the rope they bear is long.” | |
| |
| They have fooled the jailer with lying words, | |
| They have fooled the man with lies; | |
| The bolts unbar, the locks are drawn, | 35 |
| And the great door open flies. | |
| |
| Now they have taken him from the jail, | |
| And hard and fast they ride, | |
| And the leader laughs low down in his throat, | |
| As they halt my trunk beside. | 40 |
| |
| Oh, the judge, he wore a mask of black, | |
| And the doctor one of white, | |
| And the minister, with his oldest son, | |
| Was curiously bedight. | |
| |
| Oh, foolish man, why weep you now? | 45 |
| ’Tis but a little space, | |
| And the time will come when these shall dread | |
| The mem’ry of your face. | |
| |
| I feel the rope against my bark, | |
| And the weight of him in my grain, | 50 |
| I feel in the throe of his final woe | |
| The touch of my own last pain. | |
| |
| And never more shall leaves come forth | |
| On a bough that bears the ban; | |
| I am burned with dread, I am dried and dead, | 55 |
| From the curse of a guiltless man. | |
| |
| And ever the judge rides by, rides by, | |
| And goes to hunt the deer, | |
| And ever another rides his soul | |
| In the guise of a mortal fear. | 60 |
| |
| And ever the man he rides me hard, | |
| And never a night stays he; | |
| For I feel his curse as a haunted bough | |
| On the trunk of a haunted tree. | |
| |
