The heir of Rookwood.
229
Put by her rainbow paroquets and roses
To fashion garments for the elf child Lilia;
And even my lady mother deigned to smile,
Hearing her tiny step along the halls,
Watching the slow toil of her baby feet
Labouring from stair to stair. Her restless life
Was never still. She laughed out in her sleep,
Living the glad day over, and sometimes,
Blindfold with slumber, to the halls below
Crept from her turret chamber.
'Twas in vain
That when bright girlhood came, I tried to yoke
Her errant thoughts to mine. My elf charge paled
Over her books. She sighed for the pure air
Of crags and glens, her greyhound and her pony,
And for the free use of her glorious limbs.
She was lithe like a vine, and she could scale
The rocks as lightly. The long summer day
Was short to her if she might wander on
From hill-side to ravine, or ford the streams,
Or, resting on some island rock, her feet
Bare glancing through the waves, twine pallid wreaths
To fashion garments for the elf child Lilia;
And even my lady mother deigned to smile,
Hearing her tiny step along the halls,
Watching the slow toil of her baby feet
Labouring from stair to stair. Her restless life
Was never still. She laughed out in her sleep,
Living the glad day over, and sometimes,
Blindfold with slumber, to the halls below
Crept from her turret chamber.
'Twas in vain
That when bright girlhood came, I tried to yoke
Her errant thoughts to mine. My elf charge paled
Over her books. She sighed for the pure air
Of crags and glens, her greyhound and her pony,
And for the free use of her glorious limbs.
She was lithe like a vine, and she could scale
The rocks as lightly. The long summer day
Was short to her if she might wander on
From hill-side to ravine, or ford the streams,
Or, resting on some island rock, her feet
Bare glancing through the waves, twine pallid wreaths
