RAVELY ride the Ocean-Daughters, When tempests lash the bounding waters; Their music then is the thunder's crash, And their midnight torch the lightning flash; With the weeds that are torn from the streaming rocks; Gracefully ride the Ocean-Daughters, When moonlight floods the sleeping waters; 48 SEA-NYMPHS. Then the lotus that opens at night Is wreathed in their tresses, soft and bright; Is their best joyous minstrelsy; And they snatch at the stars when they see them glow In the liquid depths of the tide below; Or chase the sword-fish in merry glee, As they start through the still waves wild and free. But fairest far are the Ocean-Daughters On their watery couch in those dreamy hours; Of those whom they love, and who love them well; What must not be heard in the depths below. THE HAUNTED LAKE. 49 THE HAUNTED LAKE. ZOW, with religious awe, the farewell light Blends with the solemn colouring of the night; Mid groves of clouds that crest the mountain's brow, And round the west's proud lodge their shadows throw, Like Una shining on her gloomy way, The half-seen form of Twilight roams astray, Shedding, through paly loop-holes mild and small, Gleams that upon the lake's still bosom fall; Soft o'er the surface creep those lustres pale, Tracking the motions of the fitful gale. With restless interchange, at once the bright Wins on the shade, the shade upon the light. No favoured eye was e'er allowed to gaze On lovelier spectacles in faery days; When gentle Spirits urged a sportive chase, Brushing, with lucid wands, the water's face; While music, stealing round the glimmering deeps, Charmed the tall circle of the enchanted steeps. -The lights are vanished from the watery plains: No wreck of all the pageantry remains ; Unheeded night has overcome the vales; On the dark earth the wearied vision fails; The latest lingerer of the forest train, The lone, black fir, forsakes the faded plain; Last evening sight, the cottage smoke, no more Lost in the thickened darkness, glimmers hoar; And towering from the sullen dark-brown mere, Like a black wall, the mountain-steeps appear. |