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"Hark! 't is an elfin-storm from faery land,

Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed:
Arise-arise! the morning is at hand;-
The bloated wassaillers will never heed:-
Let us away, my love, with happy speed;
There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,-
Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead:
Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be,

For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee."

351

She hurried at his words, beset with fears,
For there were sleeping dragons all around,
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears-
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they

found.

In all the house was heard no human sound.
A chain-droop'd lamp was flickering by each

door;

The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,

Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar; And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

360

They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;
Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide;
Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,
With a huge empty flagon by his side:
The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his

hide,

But his sagacious eye an inmate owns:
By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:-
The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;-
The key turns, and the door upon its hinges

groans.

369

And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.
That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,
And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form
Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,
Were long be-nightmar’d. Angela the old
Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform;
The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,
For aye unsought for slept among his ashes

1820.

cold.

John Keats.

378

THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL
SWAMP

"THEY made her grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true;

And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal
Swamp,

Where all night long, by a firefly lamp,

She paddles her white canoe.

And her firefly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear;

Long and loving our life shall be,

And I'll hide the maid in a cypress-tree

When the footstep of death is near!"

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds,-
His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,

Through many a fen, where the serpent

feeds,

And man never trod before!

And when on earth he sunk to sleep,

If slumber his eyelids knew,

He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep

The flesh with blistering dew!

And near him the she-wolf stirred the brake, And the copper-snake breathed in his ear, Till he starting cried, from his dream awake, "O when shall I see the dusky Lake,

And the white canoe of my dear?"

He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright

Quick over its surface played,-
"Welcome," he said, “my dear one's light!"
And the dim shore echoed for many a night
The name of the death-cold maid!

Till he hollowed a boat of the birchen bark,
Which carried him off from the shore;

Far he followed the meteor spark,

The wind was high and the clouds were dark, And the boat returned no more.

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But oft, from the Indian hunter's camp,
This lover and maid so true

Are seen, at the hour of midnight damp,
To cross the Lake by a firefly lamp,

And paddle their white canoe!

1806.

40

Thomas Moore.

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