Poetry > Lady of the lake

92
THE LADY OF THE LAKE.
Canto II
Reluctantly and slow, the maid
The unwelcome sumnioning obey’d,
And, when a distant bugle rung,
In the mid-path aside she sprung:—
“ List, Allan-Bane ! From mainland cast,
I hear my father’s signal blast,
Be ours,” she cried, “ the skiff to guide,
And waft him from the mountain-side.”
Then, like a sunbeam, swift and bright,
She darted to her shallop light,
And, eagerly while Roderick scann’d,
For her dear form, his mother’s band,
The islet far behind her lay,
And she had landed in the bay.
XXII.
Some feelings are to mortals given,
With less of earth in them than heaven:
And if there be a human tear
From passion’s dross refined and clear,
A tear so limpid and so meek,
It would not stain an angel’s cheek,
’Tis that which pious fathers shed
Upon a duteous daughter’s head!
And as the Douglas to his breast
His darling Ellen closely press’d,
Such holy drops her tresses steep’d,
Though 'twas an hero’s eye that weep’d.