After a popular custom of the country, the old bard Bracy is introduced. Geraldine rises, puts on her silken vestments--tricks her hair, and not doubting her spell, she awakens Christabel,
"Sleep you, sweet lady Christabel? I trust that you have rested well." And Christabel awoke and spied The same who lay down by her side-- O rather say, the same whom she Rais'd up beneath the old oak tree! Nay fairer yet, and yet more fair! For she belike hath drunken deep Of all the blessedness of sleep! And while she spake, her looks, her air Such gentle thankfulness declare; That (so it seem'd) her girded vests Grew tight beneath her heaving breasts. "Sure I have sinn'd!" said Christabel, "Now heaven be prais'd if all be well!" And in low faultering tones, yet sweet, Did she the lofty lady greet; With such perplexity of mind As dreams too lively leave behind.
Christabel then leaves her couch, and having offered up her prayers, she leads fair Geraldine to meet the Baron.--They enter his presence room, when her father rises, and while pressing his daughter to his breast, he espies the lady Geraldine, to whom he gives such welcome as
But when the Baron hears her tale, and her father's name, the poet enquires feelingly:
Why wax'd Sir Leoline so pale, Murmuring o'er the name again, Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine?
Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love, Doth work like madness in the brain. And thus it chanc'd, as I divine, With Roland and Sir Leoline. Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother: They parted--never to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining-- They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between;-- But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.
Sir Leoline gazed for a moment on the face of Geraldine, and the youthful Lord of Tryermaine again came back upon his heart. He is then described as forgetting his age, and his noble heart swells with indignation.