The Lucy Poems: A Song Cycle for Bass-Baritone and Piano

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.

When she I loved look'd every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening moon.

Upon the moon I fix'd my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reach'd the orchard-plot;
And, as we climb'd the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy's cot
Came near and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature's gentlest boon!
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopp'd:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropp'd.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a lover's head!
'O mercy!' to myself I cried,
'If Lucy should be dead!'

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
-- Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

I travelled among unknown men, 
  In lands beyond the sea;
Nor England! did I know till then
  What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
  Nor will I quit [thy shore]1 
A second time, for still I seem
  To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel
  The joy of my desire;
And she I cherished turned [her]2 wheel
  Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,
  The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine [too is]3 the last green field
  That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

Three years she grew in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, 'A lovelier flower
         On earth was never sown;
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
         A lady of my own.

"Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me
         The girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
         To kindle or restrain.

'She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
         Or up the mountain springs;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
         Of mute insensate things.

'The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;
         Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form
         By silent sympathy.

'The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
         In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
         Shall pass into her face.

'And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height,
         Her virgin bosom swell;
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give
While she and I together live
         Here in this happy dell.'

Thus Nature spake--The work was done--
How soon my Lucy's race was run!
         She died, and left to me
This heath, this calm, and quiet scene;
The memory of what has been,
         And never more will be. 

A slumber did my spirit seal;
  I had no human fears:
She seem'd a thing that could not feel
  The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
  She neither hears nor sees;
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course,
  With rocks, and stones, and trees.