Page:The complete poems of Emily Bronte.djvu/193

Rh Her wavy hair on her shoulders bare,

It shone like soft clouds round the moon;

Her noiseless feet, like melting sleet,

Gleamed white a moment, then were gone.

'What seek you now on this bleak moor brow,

Where wanders that form from heaven descending?'

It was thus I said as her graceful head

The spirit above my couch was bending.

'This is my home where whirlwinds blow,

Where snowdrifts round my path are swelling;

'Tis many a year, 'tis long ago,

Since I beheld another dwelling.

'When thick and fast the smothering blast

I've welcomed the winter on the plain,

If my cheek grew pale in its loudest gale,

May I never tread the hills again.

'The shepherd had died on the mountain-side,

But my ready aid was near him then;

I led him back o'er the hidden track

And gave him to his native glen.

'When tempests roar on the lonely shore

I light my beacon with seaweeds dry,

And it flings its fire through the darkness dire

And gladdens the sailor's hopeless eye.