Classic Poem

Often, when at night delaying,
Where the winding river flows,
On the silent waters playing
How the star of beauty glows!
In the clear wave brightly sparkling,
Brightly as the love-lit eye,
Now again its beams are darkling,
As the clouds athwart it fly:
With a soft and tender feeling
When I whisper out my song,
While the mellow brook is stealing
Silently the sand along.

There is in that twinkling planet
More than all the stars can boast,
And my fond eye loves to scan it,
Like a light-house on a coast,
Where the budding Spring is ever
Pranking out her wooing bowers,
And the locks of beauty never
Float without a crown of flowers,
And her eye is ever straying
Round and round with kindling beam,
Like her own bright planet playing
Sweetly on the silent stream.

Now the star is near the mountain
Slowly setting in the west,
Shining on a crisping fountain,
Or a lakelet's ruffled breast;
Now its maiden brightness mingles
With the mist that hovers there,
Rising from the woody dingles,
Like a streaming tress of hair;

Now a form is imaged round it,
'T is the form that I adore;
Every charm of earth has crowned it,
Fairer, beauty never wore:
Oh! how dear that tender feeling,
When the rays of beauty play,
Where the mellow brook is stealing,
Lighted by the moon, away.