English poem
These clothes I should be washing down to the tide I’ll bear
by Mary Pickering Nichols (1829–1915)
“These clothes I should be washing down to the tide I’ll bear, And fling them into the water,” said the maiden fair; “Their freedom I will give them, even as ’tis fitting That I, a queen, should do it; hence they may float away, no hindrance meeting.”
More by Mary Pickering Nichols
- Then to Siegfried of Moorland at once King Hettel told
- Then to the band of wanderers the lordly Hagen said
- Then to them said Morunc: “Would there were nothing more
- Then, in the midst of uproar, they rode away from the shore
- This the wicked Gerlind heard, as the warder cried
- Thither rode from Denmark Horant young and brave
- Those there are wretched maidens, from far across the sea
- Those who came with Morunc wore mantles over all