A single word — a magic spring
That touched, revealed a world
A tone from one sweet trembling string
That deepest feelings stirred

I cannot tell and none can tell
How flashed the mighty stream
At once as on the vision fell
Its silent, written name

The Calabar! The Calabar!
The sacred land it laves
I little thought so lone so far
To hear its rolling waves

To see and hear them in their course
As clear, as they who stand
And watch the unbridled torrent force
Its way through Angria's land

As clear as they who oft at eve
Here from the lattice dim
Looked forth where Adrian's towers receive

How many summer nights of balm
Have given those walls their glow
And still their soft and golden calm
Alas saw only woe
The eye with sleepless day-dreams dim
The cheek with vigils pale

On the rolling water gaze
As it sweeps beneath the sky
Where the sun's descending rays
In the path of twilight die
All is warm, and dim and calm
All in heaven is mellow blue
And there falls a sacred calm
On the earth with summer's dew
Through the flowers and shining leaves
From her lofty bower she bends
Where the rose a curtain weaves
And the vine a shadow lends

How sadly her speaking eye
Still looks down the castle slope
Though the moon be lifted high
Like the golden lamp of hope
As she leans her long black curls
On the glossy ivy lie
With the strings of lucid pearls
That their splendid clusters tie

As she leans the moon's full beam
Softly lights her cheek & brow
And though fair as angel's dream
She is pale as marble now
Through checquering leave and flower
That ray her chamber shows
And no dark Sultana's bower
With such fairy splendour glows

In that mirror's mystic gleam
With its massive mouldings round
There is shadowed like a dream
Yonder hill's aerial bound
And soft green woods, and skies
With a moon of milder light
And more shadowy stars that rise
But to gem a dimmer night

Scarce imagined, e'er tis gone
O bright dream a moment stay
Though so sweet, so calm, and lone
It is fading fast away
I scarce saw thee by the light
Of the moon that filled thy cell
E'er thy form was wrapt in night
Thou lovely sentinel!

And thy vigil never more
In that watch-tower came again
For the sands on Fancy's shore
Lost the trace in stormy rain