Page:Maryland, my Maryland, and other poems - Randall - 1908.pdf/84

 :::Here, ah here, the Indian maiden,
 * When with love and languor laden,
 * Sought thee, as the cells of Adenn;
 * With a world of gentle guesses,
 * In thy flood her floating tresses
 * Poured their cascade of caresses!
 * Here her hero from the rattle
 * Of the crimson blows of battle,
 * Slept beneath her soothing prattle—
 * Slept—but, ere the sun’s decline,
 * Like the lightning-riven pine,

And his heart’s blood, Silver Billow, swept its throbbings into thine.


 * When the sad and solemn moon
 * Muses o’er the lone lagoon,
 * And laughs the melancholy loon,
 * When the crooning winter breeze,
 * Hapless from the Hebrides,
 * Chafes the dead cathedral trees;
 * ’Mid the vultures muffled wails,
 * Stifled by the panther hails
 * Shuddering up palmetto trails;
 * When the globe is wrought in sleep,
 * When the gnomes their vigils keep
 * By the mountain and the deep—
 * I can fancy phantom things,
 * On their thunder-tarnished wings,

Soaring with a fallen grandeur over the enchanted springs!