Love

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,Whatever stirs this mortal frame,All are but ministers of Love,And feed his sacred flame.

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

The moonshine, stealing o'er the sceneHad blended with the lights of eve;And she was there, my hope, my joy,My own dear Genevieve!

She leant against the armed man,The statue of the armed 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 singThe 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 wellThat ruin wild and hoary.

She listened with a flitting blush,With downcast eyes and modest grace;For well she knew, I could not chooseBut gaze upon her face.

I told her of the Knight that woreUpon his shield a burning brand;And that for ten long years he wooedThe Lady of the Land.

I told her how he pined: and ah!The deep, the low, the pleading toneWith which I sang another's love,Interpreted my own.

She listened with a flitting blush,With downcast eyes, and modest grace;And she forgave me, that I gazedToo fondly on her face!

But when I told the cruel scornThat crazed that bold and lovely Knight,And that he crossed the mountain-woods,Nor rested day nor night;

That sometimes from the savage den,And sometimes from the darksome shade,And sometimes starting up at onceIn green and sunny glade,--

There came and looked him in the faceAn angel beautiful and bright;And that he knew it was a Fiend,This miserable Knight!

And that unknowing what he did,He leaped amid a murderous band,And saved from outrage worse than deathThe Lady of the Land!

And how she wept, and clasped his knees;And how she tended him in vain--And ever strove to expiateThe scorn that crazed his brain;--

And that she nursed him in a cave;And how his madness went away,When on the yellow forest-leavesA dying man he lay;--

His dying words-but when I reachedThat tenderest strain of all the ditty,My faltering voice and pausing harpDisturbed her soul with pity!

All impulses of soul and senseHad 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 virgin-shame;And like the murmur of a dream,I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved--she stepped aside,As conscious of my look she stepped--Then suddenly, with timorous eyeShe fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed 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 so I won my Genevieve,My bright and beauteous Bride.