ON HEARING THE BALLAD “ALLEN PERCY”

A plaintive song, so strangely sweet and old,

That all my soul within itself would fold

And gently keep so quaint a melody,

That like a bird’ s its notes of liquid gold

Might oft repeat their sweetness unto me.

A tale of joyless splendor long ago,

Of wedded lady and of loveless woe,

How she to soothe her sick heart’ s misery

Cradled in vines her little child, and so

Sang of dear love beneath a greenwood tree.

And through it all there runs such saddest plaint,

As sweet as lutes, now murmurous, now faint,

Till, like the far-heard sighing of the sea,

It sweeps in gathering passion past restraint,

Then breaks, and croons in mournful minor key.

Ah, well-a-day! I listen breathless till

I half believe that sorrowing singer still

Dreams on divinely by the whispering tree;

For in your voice all tenderest heart-strings thrill,

And all the woodland’ s marvelous minstrelsy!