The heir of Rookwood.
237
Love lay too deep. 'Twas buried from my sight.
The spoils of sixteen summers rose above it.
Life's reddest flower unfolded like a lily
For want of light. I needed sterner teaching—
Unapt to read the riddle of past days,
To twist in one their many-coloured threads,
To see the scattered brightness of my life
Concentred to a star.
'Twas early May.
Across the lawns, to woods and waves beyond
"We had been loitering. Ernestine and I
Looked from its high banks to the stream below,
Part veiled with drooping boughs—and, ankle deep
In grass and yielding moss—from rock to rock
Dropped our sure-footed Lilia, till at last,
Safe on the pebbly shore, she turning, threw
Her long locks back, and lifting eyes brimful
Of elvish laughter, called, "Hark, Ernestine!
My father is a water sprite, and see,
The vine, my mother, leans to his embrace
From the rough rocks he scales. Therefore I twine
Wet water weeds and scarlet pendent blooms
The spoils of sixteen summers rose above it.
Life's reddest flower unfolded like a lily
For want of light. I needed sterner teaching—
Unapt to read the riddle of past days,
To twist in one their many-coloured threads,
To see the scattered brightness of my life
Concentred to a star.
'Twas early May.
Across the lawns, to woods and waves beyond
"We had been loitering. Ernestine and I
Looked from its high banks to the stream below,
Part veiled with drooping boughs—and, ankle deep
In grass and yielding moss—from rock to rock
Dropped our sure-footed Lilia, till at last,
Safe on the pebbly shore, she turning, threw
Her long locks back, and lifting eyes brimful
Of elvish laughter, called, "Hark, Ernestine!
My father is a water sprite, and see,
The vine, my mother, leans to his embrace
From the rough rocks he scales. Therefore I twine
Wet water weeds and scarlet pendent blooms
