Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.

The Pilot’s Daughter

William Allingham (1824–1889)

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

Of narrow thoughts and manners coarse,

Coarse as the curtains that beseem

With net-festoons the smoky beam,

Would never lodge my favorite dream,

E’en with my pilot’s daughter.

To the large riches of the earth,

Endowing men in their own spite,

The poor, by privilege of birth,

Stand in the closest right.

Yet not alone the palm grows dull

With clayey delve and watery pull:

And this for me,—or hourly pain.

But could I sink and call it gain?

Unless a pilot true, ’twere vain

To wed a pilot’s daughter.

Like her, perhaps?—but ah! I said,

Much wiser leave such thoughts alone.

So may thy beauty, simple maid,

Be mine, yet all thine own.

Joined in my free contented love

With companies of stars above;

Who, from their throne of airy steep,

Do kiss these ripples as they creep

Across the boundless, darkening deep.—

Low voiceful wave! hush soon to sleep

The gentle pilot’s daughter.