She is bright and young, and her glory comes
Of an ancient ancestry,
And I love for her beauty's sake to gaze
On the light of her full dark eye.
She is gentle and still, and her voice is as low
As the voice of a summer wind,
And falseness and fickleness have not left
One stain on her girlish mind.
I felt the wild dream creep over like sleep,
More strangely each day I stayed,
And in four short weeks my heart was bound up
In the heart of that high-born maid.

O the stir of love and its beating thrills!—
I never had known its power;
So I shut my eyes and went down the stream,
And might have been there to this hour:
But she sung light songs at a solemn time,
And the spell was gone for ever;
And who shall say 'twas a trivial thing
That delicate chain to sever?