KONRAD.

Greatness, and greatness yet again, mine angel!
Greatness for which we groan in misery!
A few days still,--let it torment the heart,--
A few days only, fewer already are.
'Tis done! 'Tis vain to grieve for vanished time.
Aye! let us weep, but let our proud foes tremble!
For Konrad wept, but 'twas to murder them!
But wherefore cam'st thou here--wherefore, my love?
Unto God's service did I vow myself.
Was it not better in His holy walls,
Afar from me to live and die than here,
In the land of lying and of murderous war,
In this tower-grave by long and painful tortures
To expire, and open solitary eyes,
And through the unbroken fetters of this grate
Implore for help, and I be forced to hear,
To look upon the torture of long death,
Standing afar, and curse my very soul,
That harbours relics yet of tenderness?

VOICE FROM THE TOWER.

If thou lamentest, hither come no more!
Though thou shouldst come, with burning zeal implore,
Thou shouldst hear nought. My window now I close,
Descend once more into my prison darkness.
Let me in silence drink my bitter tears.
Farewell for aye, farewell, my only one!
And let the memory perish of this hour,
Wherein thou didst no pity for me show.

KONRAD.

Then thou have pity! for thou art an angel!
Stay! But if prayer is powerless to restrain,
On the tower's angle will I strike my head;
I will implore thee by the death of Cain.

VOICE FROM THE TOWER.

O let us both have pity on ourselves!
My love, remember, great as is this world,
Two of us only on this mighty earth,
Upon the seas of sand two drops of dew.
Scarce breathes a little wind, from the earthly vale
For aye we vanish--ah! together perish!
I came not here for this, to torture thee.
I would not on me take the holy vows,
Because I dared not pledge my heart to Heaven,
While yet in it an earthly lover reigned.
I in the cloister would remain, and humbly
Devote my days to service of the nuns.
But there without thee, everything around
Was all so new, so wild, so strange to me!
Remembering then that after many years,
Thou shouldst return again to Mary's town
To seek for vengeance on the enemy,
The cause defending of a hapless folk,
I said unto myself, "Who waits long years
Shortens with thoughts; maybe he now returns,
Maybe is come. Is it not free to ask,
Though living I immure me in the grave,
That once more I may loo