THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATRONE

LUCY.

I.

STRANGE fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,

But in the Lover's ear alone
What once to me befel.

When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,

I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,

All over the wide lea;

With quickening pace my horse drew nigh Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reached the orchard-plot;

And, as we climbed the hill,

The sinking moon to Lucy's cot

Came near, and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature's gentlest boon!
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage-roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover's head!

"O mercy!" to myself I cried,

"If Lucy should be dead!"

II.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!

- Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

III.

I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel

The joy of my desire;

And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed The bowers where Lucy played;

And thine too is the last green field

That Lucy's eyes surveyed.