This ring of gold, with the small curl
Of chestnut hair beset with pearl
This ring & ringlet bright reveal
What time & tears would fain conceal
Time might have touched with his decay
And hid with his grey moss the scene
And tears might long have washed away
The traces of where that thought has been
But this my mystic amulet
Revives the picture when it fades
Heightens the lights I would forget
And deepens the declining shades

Though quite alone & knowing well
That none on earth now think of me
How to the summons of that spell
Answers the voice of memory
And what delusive hopes it brings
Fanning me with their rainbow wings
I stood in that habitual mood
Of anxious thought I feel all day
Watching the starlight solitude
That round my forest mansion lay
I looked into the deep dark wood
Down a dim path soon lost in gloom
Then from, the window where I stood
Glanced round upon my firelit room
I thought of phantoms for so still
Was all in the dim flushing glimer
There crept a kind of winter chill
Over my flesh to watch the shimmer
Of shapeless shadows o'er the walls
And o'er the high & gilded ceiling
And o'er the draperies dark as palls
Festooned apart & now revealing
Through the clear panes gigantic trees
Waving their plumes against a heaven
Glorious with stars, a summer breeze
That movement to their boughs had given
And then it swept the slips betwe[e]n
Of dewy lawn & stirred the flowers
And down the alleys calm & green
Went singing to remoter bowers
Well as I stood a thousand dreams
Into my restless mind came thronging
With quick & strange & varying gleams
With wild regret & wilder longing
I felt impatient that my life
Was so unmarked, unloved & fated
While on the world's turmoil & strife
I gazed with interest never sated
While all day long my heart & eye
Traversed a hundred regions over
In city domes, neath open sky
Wandered & watched a viewless rover
Viewless yet anxious on the fate
Of battles & of armies pondering
Resting at many a lordly gate
That oped not to relieve my wandering
And turning desolate away
Knowing that none would now remember
The friend of one brief summer day
Forgotten in her life's November
This ring then, as I moved my hand
Flashed, suddenly a star uplighting
Its clear dark stone & like a wand
The sounding chords of memory smiting
A full, soft, deep but fitful tone
By that mysterious harp was uttered
It sounded as I sat alone
As if a hidden spectre muttered
It called back such a sweet remembrance
It placed so fair a scene before me
I longed to shake of[f] time's encumbrance
To check the years that had flowed o'er me
And roll them back and see again
The moonlight on that glorious region
That broad unbounded green champaigne
With here and there a scattered legion
Of trees from the great pathless wood
Like plumy tropic headlands stretching
Over the deep green quiet flood
Of verdure to th' horizon reaching
I stood in a low fretted door
One of the antique range of arches
Pierced in the Hall front towering o'er
The noble fertile Western marches
And that was in my early youth
Before by sin & sorrow shaded
I gazed on Love & life & truth
Through mists all dim in hues all faded
I lived in an heroic land
Heroic spirits round me moving
And thought took my humble stand
Beneath them I looked up with loving
A kind of loving though a sense
Of vassal awe blent with the feeling
My sires had died in their defence
And I to tread their path was willing
Could I be otherwise when eyes
So dark so radiant smiled on me
Smiled in their haughtiness like skies
Of midnight, starlit suddenly
Young noble Idol, I have given
My last at thy exacting shrine
And thou hast lavished an earthly heaven
Upon me in thy love divine
True it is past & all is vanished
Into forgetfulness with thee

A softened look a kindly word
An epithet of gentleness
Would thrill me like a subtle sword
And urgently my heart would press
To show by answering gratitude
My deep devotedness of spirit
The fervour almost wild & rude
My fathers gave me to inherit

That eve he by chance had found me
At the threshold of the door alone
Watching the wide expanse around me
Of park & wood beneath the moon
He spoke and at his princely bidding
I sat down humbly at his feet
He asked me and his anger dreading
I sang a ballad wild & sweet

Wild sweet & full of Western fire
I know not how the words flowed forth
But I felt the night my heart inspire
And the glory of the moonlit earth
And I felt though I dared not look & see
Who stood half bending over me
And there was a vague strange sense of wrong
That he stood so near & gazed so long
And I would not that any beside had seen
His eagle eye & his smiling mien
And felt a kind of troubled joy
That the shade was so deep in that solemn sky
That the close veil of ivy clustering near
Had shut out the moonbeam broad & clear
And yet there was terror in that delight
And a burning dread of the lonely night
I would have given life to be away
And out in the pure & sunny day