SISTER ELLEN, I've been dreaming
Of a fair and happy time;
Gentle thoughts are round me gleaming,
Thoughts of sunny girlhood's prime :
Oh, the light, untutored fancies,
Images so quaint and bold-
Outlines dim of old romances,
Forming childhood's age of gold!
Eternal spring was then above us,
Sunshine cheered our every path;
None then knew us but to love us-
Winning ways sweet childhood hath.
Thou art little Nelly, looking
Up into my anxious face,
I thy childish caprice brooking,
As thy merry thoughts I trace:
See thy dreamy blue eyes glancing
From thy founts of light and glee,
And thy little feet go dancing
Like the waves upon the sea! Tossing from thy snowy shoulder Golden curls with witching grace, Charming every new beholder
With thine arch, expressive face.
Sister Ellen! I've been dreaming
Of some lightsome summer eves,
When the harvest-moon was beaming
Softly through the dewy leaves-
How among the flowers we wandered,
Treading light as summer air;
Looking upward, how we pondered
On the dazzling glories there!
We were children then together,
Though I older was in years,
And life's dark and stormy weather
Seemed like April's smiles and tears.
THEN, as I wandered where the huddling rill
Brightens with water-breaks the hollow ghyll,*
To where, while thick above the branches close,
In dark brown bason its wild waves repose,
Inverted shrubs, and moss of darkest green,
Cling from the rocks, with pale wood-weeds between;
Save that aloft the subtle sunbeams shine
On withered briars that o'er the crags recline;
Sole light admitted here, a small cascade
Illumes with sparkling from the twilight shade;
Beyond, along the vista of the brook,
Where antique roots its bustling path o'erlook,
The eye reposes on a secret bridge
Half grey, half shagged with ivy to its ridge.
Sweet Rill, farewell! To morrow's noon again Shall hide me, wooing long thy wildwood strain; But now the sun has gained his western road, And eve's mild hour invites my steps abroad.
THE hinds how blest, who ne'er beguiled
To quit their hamlet's hawthorn wild,
Nor haunt the crowu, por tempt the main,
For splendid care and guilty gain!
When morning's twilight-tinctured beam
Strikes their low thatch with slanting gleam.
They rove abroad in ether blue,
To dip the scythe in fragrant dew;
The sheaf to bind, the beech to fell,
That nodding shades a craggy dell.
'Midst gloomy glades, in warbles clear,
Wild Nature's sweetest notes they hear:
On green untrodden banks they view
The hyacinth's neglected hue;
In their lone haunts, and woodland rounds,
They spy the squirrel's airy bounds;
And startle from her ashen spray,
Across the glen, the screaming jay:
Each native charm their steps explore
Of solitude's sequester'd store.
For them the moon with cloudless ray
Mounts, to illume their homeward way:
Their weary spirits to relieve,
The meadows incense breathe at eve.
No riot mars the simple fare
That o'er a glimmering hearth they share :
But when the curfew's measured roar
Duly, the darkening valleys o'er,
Has echoed from the distant town,
They wish no beds of cygnet-down,
No trophied canopies, to close
Their drooping eyes in quick repose.
Their little sons, who spread the bloom
Of health around the clay-built room,
Or through the primrosed coppice stray,
Or gambol in the new-mown hay;
Or quaintly braid the cowslip-twine,
Or drive afield the tardy kine;
Or hasten from the sultry hill,
To loiter at the shady rill;
Or climb the tall pine's gloomy crest,
To rob the raven's ancient nest.
Their humble porch with honey'd flowers
The curling woodbine's shade embowers;
From the small garden's thymy mound
Their bees in busy swarms resound;
Nor fell Disease, before his time,
Hastes to consume life's golden prime.
But when their temples long have wore
The silver crown of tresses hoar,
As studious still calm peace to keep,
Beneath a flowery turf they sleep.
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