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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 armed man,
The statue of the armed knight;
She stood and listened to my harp,
Amid the lingering light.

I played a sad and doleful air,
I sung an old and moving story;
An old rude song, that fitted well
The ruins 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 who wore
Upon his shield a burning brand:
And how for ten long years he wooed
The Ladie of the land.

I told her how he pined: and ah,

The deep, the low, the pleading tone, In which I told another's love,

Interpreted my own!

She listened with a flitting 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 this bold and lovely knight,

And how he roamed the mountain woods,
Nor rested day nor night:

And how he crossed the woodman's path, Through briars and swampy mosses beat, How boughs, rebounding, scourged his limbs, And low stubs gored his feet:

How sometimes from the savage den,

And sometimes from the darksome shade,

And sometimes starting up at once

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There came and looked him in the face

An Angel beautiful and bright, And how he knew it was a fiend, This miserable knight!

And how, unknowing what he did,

He leapt amid a lawless band,

And saved, from outrage worse than death,

The Ladie of the land.

And how she wept and clasped his knees, And how she tended him in vain,

And meekly strove to expiate

The scorn that crazed his brain:

And how she nursed him in a cave,

And how his madness went away,

When, on the yellow forest leaves,
A dying man he lay:

His dying words-but when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faultering voice, and pausing harp,
Disturbed her soul with pity.

All impulses of soul and sense

Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve,

The music and the doleful tale,

The rich and balmy eve;

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long:

She wept with pity and delight

She blushed with love and maiden shame,

And, like the murmur of a dream,

I heard her breathe my name.

I saw her bosom heave and swell,
Heave and swell with inward sighs—
I could not choose but love to see
Her gentle bosom rise.

Her wet cheek glowed, she stept aside,
As conscious of my look she stept,
Then suddenly with timorous eye
She flew to me and wept.

She half inclosed me with her arms

She pressed me with a meek embrace, And bending back her head, looked up, And gazed upon my face.

'Twas partly love and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel, than see
The swelling of her heart!

I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And thus I won my Genevieve,
My bright and beauteous bride!

And now once more a tale of woe,
A woeful tale of love I sing,
For thee, my Genevieve! it sighs
And trembles on the string.

When last I sung the cruel scorn

That crazed this bold and lovely knight,

And how he roamed the mountain woods,

Nor rested day nor night:

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