The bells :: :: University of Virginia Library

One day while sitting in the dim old woods,
Charmed with the braided notes of brooks and birds,
Sleep stole upon him like a pleasant thought.
His head was pillowed upon violets,
And lilies stood on tip-toe to his lips.
As thus he slept, an angel dropped among
The flowerets, the Lady Volant and
The Earl went by and saw him slumbering;
And ever after in the maiden's dream,
Was Imore sleeping by the rivulet.

Ah, he beheld her on that summer day
Through the sly openings of his roguish eyes;

And she was queenly as a budded moon!
Peerless as she whose nectared kisses cost
Mark Antony a kingdom! And he turned
From gay to sad, and haunted the old wood;
His cheeks grew pale as lilies in a rill;
He sang no longer like a morning lark,
But hummed around the lindens like a bee.

Once Lady Volant loved to sit and watch
From Odenwald's high tower, the red sun
Folding his purple pinions for the eve,
And the clear stars that cluster thick upon
The arch of night, like watery diamonds
On a ring of jet. But now she strayed far
In the leafy glens, and plucking roses,
Warm with the parting kiss that sunset gives,
Came melancholy with the twilight home.

One eve as she was roving thro' the glade,
She found the minstrel sleeping as before
Upon a couch of violets—as once
Diana found Endymion asleep,
Loving him ever after—and from out
His parted lips his breath came like the breath
Of hyacinths. Then whispered Volant
Softly to herself, “Methinks I could such

Honied sweetness from those full lips draw, as
Does a bee from the sweet honeysuckle.
Now by the blood that circles in these veins
And prompts me in this most delicious freak!
I'll taste them, and if he awakes I'll swear
That 'twas some spirit kissed him in his dream,
Not I; that I'm the daughter of an earl
And would not stoop to press a common lip:
Then I'll sweep by, majestic as the Night.”

Then, like a rain-bow, she bent over him,
With all the hues of autumn on her cheeks.
Raising the fringèd curtains of his eyes,
He threw both arms around her snowy neck
And punished her with kisses! She drew back
With angered orbs; then blushed, then thro' the wood
Leaped the silvery echoes of her laugh.
And then she called him “cruel, cruel boy,”
And asked him if the blue-bells did not close
Their eyes with envy, when he looked at them;
And then she laid her hand among his curls.
The evening melted, and night found them there—
Cupid and Psyche wooing in a wood!

“There is a clime,” he said, “a far off land
Of orange-bowers and magnolia trees,
With streams of gold fish gurgling 'mong the hills;
Where winter never throws a pall upon
The sweet-lipped flowerets, and May and June
Go, hand in hand, throughout the live-long year!”

Softly at night she left the castle gate
To wander with the minstrel to that land
Of never dying summer and blue skies.
They wandered off, and never more were seen
By any swine-herd of those dewy dells,
Nor by the Dryads, nor the Fauns, nor Fays,
Nor any of the sylvan train that dwell
By the cool fountains of that haunted wood.