 | The poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich |  |
393
XIII THE LORELEI
Yonder we see it from the steamer's deck,The haunted Mountain of the Lorelei—
The hanging crags sharp-cut against a sky
Clear as a sapphire without flaw or fleck.
'T was here the Siren lay in wait to wreck
The fisher-lad. At dusk, as he rowed by,
Perchance he heard her tender amorous cry,
And, seeing the wondrous whiteness of her neck,
Perchance would halt, and lean towards the shore;
Then she by that soft magic which she had
Would lure him, and in gossamers of her hair,
Gold upon gold, would wrap him o'er and o'er,
Wrap him, and sing to him, and drive him mad,
Then drag him down to no man knoweth where.
| The poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich | |