Betwixt the green rows of the corn,
Ne'er grew a wild blossom so sweet—
Her mother's low cabin was gay
With the music that followed her feet:

Combing now the white lengths of the wool
With hands that were whiter than they;
Spinning now in the mossy-roofed porch
Till the time when the birds go away.

Her hair was as black as the storm;
No maiden in all the green glen
Was so pretty, so praised, or so loved:
We called her the Wood Lily, then.

The church wall, so gray and so cold,
Is streaked with the vines which she set
And her roses beside the arched door,
In summer half smother it yet.

And often with pitiful looks
They pause, who put by the lithe shoots,
As if something said, “It were well,
If Lily lay down at the roots.”

Dull spiders reel up their white skeins
On the wheel where she comes not to spin,
And her hands have pulled all the bright flowers
From the locks that are faded and thin.

And if you go near to the door,
You will choke with the coming of sighs,
For by the dark hearth-stone she sits
All the day, singing low lullabies,

So low, they may scarcely be heard,
While the smile of her lip and her brow,
Like sunbeams are gone under clouds—
And this is our Wood Lily, now.