The moonshine stealing o'er the scene, She leaned against the armed man, I played a sad and doleful air, 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 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, 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 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, His dying words-but when I reached 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, 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, Her wet cheek glowed, she stept aside, 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, I calmed her fears, and she was calm, And now once more a tale of woe, 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: |