Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
Song: Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbersGeorge Darley (17951846)
S
Lull’d by the faint breezes sighing through her hair;
Sleeps she and hears not the melancholy numbers
Breathed to my sad lute ’mid the lonely air.
To wind round the willow banks that lure him from above:
O that in tears, from my rocky prison streaming,
I too could glide to the bower of my love!
Opes she her eyelids at the dream of my lay,
Listening, like the dove, while the fountains echo round her,
To her lost mate’s call in the forests far away.
Still Heaven’s messenger of comfort to me—
Come—this fond bosom, O faithfullest and fairest,
Bleeds with its death-wound, its wound of love for thee!