Chapter III

And fancy, oft, would guide my feet
To glooms, where sleepless spirits wander’d,
Or lonely vales, retirement sweet,
Where some lorn stream its course meander’d.
Oft, in some deep untrodden dell,
Where Eremite might build his cell,
Remote from all the ills that wait
The pompous equipage of state;
To human steps so much unknown,
Ev’n thought might find herself alone;
Nought on her silence to intrude,
Or break her much lov’d solitude.--
Imagination’s forceful power,
Would charm away the passing hour;
And fondly picture scenes of old,
By hoary matron’s legend told,
In number’s mystic, strange, and wild,
To soothe me, when a froward child;
Of ravening giant of the wold,
Of ladie fair, and gallant bold;
And grey hair’d minstrel, blythe and old;
Of martial lists, of daring deeds,
Of nodding plumes, and prancing steeds;
Of knight caparison’d in arms,
To combat for a damsel’s charms:
Or still, the more replete with fear,
The story whisper’d in the ear,
Lest angry fiend, perchance, might hear,
Of wither’d hag, or wandring sprite,
Who roam the unhallow’d hour of night,
Or form more gay, of Fairy light,
Who, when the moon’s soft ray is glancing
On the flowery green, is dancing
In many an airy roundelay;--
Vanishing ere dawn of day.

IV

Ah! in life’s morn, the trusting soul
Is calm;--the hours unheeded roll;
No passions urge their fierce controul.
Then, not a wish was unsupplied,
For scarce a boon had I to crave,
Save those, which in the heart abide,
And those indulgent nature gave.
Upon the blossom of my cheek,
The rose bud’s hue was wont to speak
The calmest sunshine of the heart,
That health and happiness impart:
Free, as the mountain breeze, was I!
That sweeps the light cloud o’er the sky;
Unknown a foretaste of the woes,--
Companions of man’s ripening years,--
That bar the eyelids from repose,
And wash them with untimely tears.
I knew not, then, the brow o’ercast
By gloomy thought, or sullen care,
I brooded o’er no pleasures past;
The future, all look’d bright and fair:
An undefined, elysian dream,
Illum’d by hope’s deceitful beam.
That hope has past!--its early ray
No more irradiates my way.--

V

How wildly swells the craggy height!
Whence the rough torrent, rushing bright,
In morning’s gay reflected beams,
A sheet of burnished silver seems;
With bickering wave, and foaming spray
In columns rising to the day;
While, midst the far resounding roar
The dark plumed eagles proudly soar;
Commingling, with the discord rude
That wakes the mountain solitude,
Their rustling pinion’s heavy sound;
Their bodeing, and terrific scream;--
Re-echoing o’er the cliff profound;
Startling the owlet from his dream,
Where, in the darkest wood, supreme
In sullen loneliness, he sits,
Mutt’ring his moody tones by fits;
Till evening spreads her shadow dun,
And, ’neath the western hill, the sun
Has sunk, his daily circle run.
Then, to some distant turret’s height,
He speeds his melancholy flight,
To mope, unseen, the livelong night.