C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

George Darley (1795–1846)

SWEET in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers,

Lulled by the faint breezes sighing through her hair;

Sleeps she, and hears not the melancholy numbers

Breathed to my sad lute amid the lonely air.

Down from the high cliffs the rivulet is teeming

To wind round the willow-banks that lure him from above:

Oh that, in tears from my rocky prison streaming,

I too could glide to the bower of my love!

Ah, where the woodbines with sleepy arms have wound her,

Opes she her eyelids at the dream of my lay,

Listening like the dove, while the fountains echo round her

To her lost mate’s call in the forest far away.

Come, then, my bird! for the peace thou ever bearest,

Still Heaven’s messenger of comfort to me;

Come! this fond bosom, my faithfulest, my fairest,

Bleeds with its death-wound,—but deeper yet for thee.