Page:Sibylline Leaves (Coleridge).djvu/64

 O my dear Mother! this strange man has left me Troubled with wilder fancies, than the Moon Breeds in the love-sick maid who gazes at it, Till lost in inward vision, with wet eye She gazes idly—But that entrance, Mother!—

Can no one hear. It is a perilous tale!

No one?

My husband's father told it me, Poor old Leoni: Angels, rest his soul! He was a woodman, and could fell, and saw, With lusty arm. You know that huge round beam Which props the hanging-wall of the old chapel? — Beneath that tree, while yet it was a tree, He found a baby, wrapt in mosses lined With thistle-beards, and such small locks of wool As hang on brambles. Well, he brought him home, And reared him at the then Lord Valez' cost; And so the babe grew up a pretty boy—