maiden, who heaves her departing sighs over the moss-clad grave of the
warrior by whom she was adored, makes up the inarticulate concert. I
trace this bard, with his silver locks, as he wanders in the valley and
explores the footsteps of his fathers. Alas! no vestige remains but
their tombs. His thought then hangs on the silver moon, as her sinking
beams play upon the rippling main; and the remembrance of deeds past and
gone recurs to the hero's mind--deeds of times when he gloried in the
approach of danger, and emulation nerved his whole frame; when the pale
orb shone upon his bark, laden with the spoils of his enemy, and
illuminated his triumphant return. When I see depicted on his
countenance a bosom full of woe; when I behold his heroic greatness
sinking into the grave, and he exclaims, as he throws a glance at the
cold sod which is to lie upon him: 'Hither will the traveler who is
sensible of my worth bend his weary steps, and seek the soul-enlivening
bard, the illustrious son of Fingal; his foot will tread upon my tomb,
but his eyes shall never behold me'; at this time it is, my dear friend,
that, like some renowned and chivalrous knight, I could instantly draw my
sword; rescue my prince from a long, irksome existence of languor and
pain; and then finish by plunging the weapon into my own breast, that I
might accompany the demi-god whom my hand had emancipated."[28]

In his last interview with Charlotte, Werther, who had already determined
upon suicide, reads aloud to her, from "The Songs of Selma," "that tender
passage wherein Armin deplores the loss of his beloved daughter. 'Alone
on the sea-beat rocks, my daughter was heard to complain. Frequent and
loud were her cries. What could her father do? All night I stood on the
shore. I saw her by the faint beam of the moon,'" etc. The reading is
interrupted by a mutual flood of tears. "They traced the similitude of
their own misfortune in this unhappy tale. . . The pointed allusion of
those words to the situation of Werther rushed with all the electric