Oft in my waking dreams do I Live o'er again that happy hour, When midway on the mount I lay, Beside the ruined tower.

The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene,

Had blended with the lights of eve; And she was there, my hope, my joy,

My own dear Genevieve!

She leaned against the armèd man, The statue of the armèd knight; She stood and listened to my lay, Amid the lingering light.

Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope, my joy, my Genevieve!
She loves me best, whene'er I sing
The songs that make her grieve.

I played a soft and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story, -
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.

She listened with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes and modest grace;

For well she knew I could not choose

But gaze upon her face.

I told her of the Knight that wore Upon his shield a burning brand; And that for ten long years he wooed

The Lady of the Land.

I told her how he pined; and ah! The deep, the low, the pleading tone

With which I sang another's love
Interpreted my own.

She listened with a fitting blush, With downcast eyes, and modest grace;

And she forgave me that I gazed
Too fondly on her face.

But when I told the cruel scorn
That crazed that bold and lovely
Knight,

And that he crossed the mountainwoods,

Nor rested day nor night;

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove;

O no; it is an ever-fixèd mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

SHAKSPEARE.

THE PILOT'S DAUGHTER.

O'ER western tides the fair Spring Day

Was smiling back as it withdrew, And all the harbor, glittering gay, Returned a blithe adieu;

Great clouds above the hills and sea Kept brilliant watch, and air was free

Where last lark firstborn star shall

greet,

When, for the crowning vernal sweet,
Among the slopes and crags I meet
The pilot's pretty daughter.

Round her gentle, happy face,
Dimpled soft, and freshly fair,
Danced with careless ocean grace

Locks of auburn hair:

As lightly blew the veering wind, They touched her cheeks, or waved behind,

Unbound, unbraided, and unlooped; Or when to tie her shoe she stooped, Below her chin the half-curls drooped,

And veiled the pilot's daughter.

Rising, she tossed them gayly back, With gesture infantine and brief, To fall around as soft a neck

As the wild-rose's leaf. Her Sunday frock of lilac shade (That choicest tint) was neatly made, And not too long to hide from view The stout but noway clumsy shoe, And stockings' smoothly-fitting blue,

That graced the pilot's daughter.

With look half timid and half droll, And then with slightly downcast

eyes,

And blush that outward softly stole, Unless it were the skies

Whose sun-ray shifted on her cheek, She turned when I began to speak; But 'twas a brightness all her own That in her firm light step was

shown,

And the clear cadence of her tone; The pilot's lovely daughter.

Were it my lot (the sudden wish)

To hand a pilot's oar and sail, Or haul the dripping moonlight mesh, Spangled with herring-scale; By dying stars, how sweet 'twould be, And dawn-blow freshening the sea, With weary, cheery pull to shore, To gain my cottage home once more, And clasp, before I reach the door,

My love, the pilot's daughter.

This element beside my feet

Allures, a tepid wine of gold; One touch, one taste, dispels the cheat

'Tis salt and nipping cold: A fisher's hut, the scene perforce