![]() | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | ![]() |
The Maid that night
Reposed the first time on a perfumed pillow.
She mused—how mournful seemed that youthful prince!
How angel-like yet childlike that old monk!
Ere long she saw in dream her parents' house
Close by that ‘Fairy Tree’ beneath whose shade
She oft had danced. A rose o'er-trailed that wall
Painted with warlike deeds a century later.
She trod its floor. The cottage inmates slept;
The old mastiff guarding still in sleep that cradle
Which had not held its babe for seventeen years.
She sought the garden; hid in apple-bloom
A bird half wakened chirped. She clomb a rock
And eastward saw among the woody hills
The upper waters of the silver Meuse
Winding relaxed down from the dawn-touched Vosges.
She saw; and sighed to wake.
Reposed the first time on a perfumed pillow.
She mused—how mournful seemed that youthful prince!
How angel-like yet childlike that old monk!
Ere long she saw in dream her parents' house
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She oft had danced. A rose o'er-trailed that wall
Painted with warlike deeds a century later.
She trod its floor. The cottage inmates slept;
The old mastiff guarding still in sleep that cradle
Which had not held its babe for seventeen years.
She sought the garden; hid in apple-bloom
A bird half wakened chirped. She clomb a rock
And eastward saw among the woody hills
The upper waters of the silver Meuse
Winding relaxed down from the dawn-touched Vosges.
She saw; and sighed to wake.
![]() | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | ![]() |