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| IN Buda’s lofty castle towers in the chapel of Saint John, | |
| Behind the mighty dead in pomp the funeral sweeps on; | |
| The covering of velvet, the coffin all of gold, | |
| Tell of the rank and royal state that coffin doth enfold. | |
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| The old and young, the rich and poor, are crowding one and all, | 5 |
| Grief sits on every face, from every eye the teardrops fall; | |
| The tolling bells are mingling their melancholy boom: | |
| Who is it to be buried? who closed within the tomb? | |
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| The last branch of an ancient root that from an ancient day | |
| Had flourished in the Magyar land, and over it held sway: | 10 |
| The blood drops last and latest of the Arpad line so brave, | |
| King Andrew’s corpse the mourning crowd are following to the grave. * * * * * | |
| But who is this that kneeleth, bending low beside the bier, | |
| Muttering a prayer while kneeling there, and shedding many a tear, | |
| In garb of woe, from top to toe, in a black veil bedight, | 15 |
| Looking like daybreak bursting on the middle hour of night. | |
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| It is the poor Elizabeth, orphaned by yonder bier, | |
| So full of charms, so pleasant, like the spring-time of the year; | |
| ’T is she, the beautiful, alas! orphan of fatherland, | |
| Her soul and body like a flower crushed by the frost’s cold hand. | 20 |
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| High o’er her head the stormy clouds are gathering to break, | |
| And above her and around her a thicker darkness make; | |
| And faction’s twining serpent and intrigue’s spider net, | |
| Leagued in a dark conspiracy, her every path beset. | |
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| Against this dastard host has risen a brave and gallant knight, | 25 |
| To shield the last of Arpad’s blood with the weapons of his might,— | |
| Matthias Csak the pillar of this house august and old,— | |
| Not two such sons the Magyar land within its bounds doth hold. | |
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| This veteran for the regal house thinks life a forfeit due, | |
| For freedom and for fatherland he bursts his heart in two; | 30 |
| He struggles like a giant man, alas! in vain, in vain, | |
| For on the throne of Arpad’s race no king shall sit again. | |
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| Andrew descends forevermore into the chilly tomb; | |
| Not for the throne Elizabeth, for her the convent’s gloom; | |
| And the brave knight who for her right so nobly stood alone | 35 |
| Is crushed beneath the ruins of the Arpad’s ancient throne. | |
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