When told at fire-side eves by those who saw
Executed—the lady and the law.
XV.
She and the law found rest: years rose and set;
That generation, cottagers and kings,
Slept with their fathers, and the violet
Has mourned above their graves a hundred springs:
Few persons keep a file of the Gazette,
And almanacs are sublunary things,
So that her fame is almost lost to earth,
As if she ne’er had breathed; and of her birth,
XVI.
And death, and lonely life’s mysterious matters,
And how she played, in our forefathers’ times,
The very devil with their sons and daughters;
And how those “delicate Ariels” of her crimes,
The spirits of the rocks, and woods, and waters,
Obeyed her bidding when in charmed rhymes,
She muttered, at deep midnight, spells whose power
Woke from brief dream of dew the sleeping summer flower,
XVII.
And hushed the night-bird’s solitary hymn,
And spoke in whispers to the forest-tree,
