Sweet innocent!  Thy yellow hair floats low
  In rippling undulations on thy breast,
Then stealing down the parted love-locks flow,
  Bathed in a sunbeam on thy knees to rest,
And touch those idle hands that folded lie,
Having from sport and toil a like immunity.

Through thy life’s dream with what a touching grace
  Childhood attends thee, nearly woman grown;
Her dimples linger yet upon thy face,
  Like dews upon a lily this day blown;
Thy sighs are born of peace, unruffled, deep;
So the babe sighs on mother’s breast asleep.

It sighs, and wakes,—­but thou! thy dream is all,
  And thou wert born for it, and it for thee;
Morn doth not take thy heart, nor evenfall
  Charm out its sorrowful fidelity,
Nor noon beguile thee from the pastoral shore,
And thy long watch beneath the sycamore.

No, down the Mere as far as eye can see,
  Where its long reaches fade into the sky,
Thy constant gaze, fair child, rests lovingly;
  But neither thou nor any can descry
Aught but the grassy banks, the rustling sedge,
And flocks of wild-fowl splashing at their edge.

And yet ’tis not with expectation hushed
  That thy mute rosy mouth doth pouting close;
No fluttering hope to thy young heart e’er rushed,
  Nor disappointment troubled its repose;
All satisfied with gazing evermore
Along the sunny Mere and reedy shore.

The brooding wren flies pertly near thy seat,
  Thou wilt not move to mark her glancing wing;
The timid sheep browse close before thy feet,
  And heedless at thy side do thrushes sing. 
So long amongst them thou hast spent thy days,
They know that harmless hand thou wilt not raise.

Thou wilt not lift it up—­not e’en to take
  The foxglove bells that nourish in the shade,
And put them in thy bosom; not to make
  A posy of wild hyacinth inlaid
Like bright mosaic in the mossy grass,
With freckled orchis and pale sassafras.

Gaze on;—­take in the voices of the Mere. 
  The break of shallow water at thy feet,
Its plash among long weeds and grasses sere,
  And its weird sobbing,—­hollow music meet
For ears like thine; listen and take thy till,
And dream on it by night when all is still.

Full sixteen years have slowly passed away,
  Young Margaret, since thy fond mother here
Came down, a six month’s wife, one April day,
  To see her husband’s boat go down the Mere,
And track its course, till, lost in distance blue,
In mellow light it faded from her view.

It faded, and she never saw it more;—­
  Nor any human eye;—­oh, grief! oh, woe! 
It faded,—­and returned not to the shore;
  But far above it still the waters flow—­
And none beheld it sink, and none could tell
Where coldly slept the form she loved so well!

But that sad day, unknowing of her fate,
  She homeward turn’d her still reluctant feet;
And at her wheel she spun, till dark and late
The evening fell—­the time when they should meet;
Till the stars paled that at deep midnight burned—­
And morning dawned, and he was not returned.