How dear to me the midnight moon,
As through the clouds she sails along,
For then with spirits I commune,
And Eustace listens to my song.
Oh, not to her who wildly mourns
Her noble lover basely slain--
Oh, not to her the morn returns
With pleasure laughing in her train.
So look'd it once, when Eustace sung
Of plighted love's perennial joys,
Now silent is that tuneful tongue,
That graceful form the worm destroys.
In vain the feather'd warblers soar,
Mid floods of many colour'd light;
I hear them not, but still deplore
The eye of Beauty quench'd in night.
How in the battle flam'd his crest,
Refulgent as the morning star:
But ruthless murder pierc'd that breast,
Which met unhurt the storm of war.
My Love, "how beautiful, how brave;"
Still, still, her oaths thy Constance keeps;
The laurel decks the victor's grave,
O'er thine the faithful willow weeps.
The disturbed state of England at this time permitted no long indulgence
of domestic sorrow.
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