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O lovers’
eyes are sharp to see,
And lovers’ ears in hearing;
And love, in life’s extremity,
Can lend an hour
of cheering.
Disease had been in Mary’s bower
And slow decay from mourning,
Though now she sits on
Neidpath’s tower
To watch her Love’s returning.
All sunk and dim her eyes so bright,
Her form
decay’d by pining,
Till through her wasted hand, at
night,
You saw the taper shining.
By fits a
sultry hectic hue
Across her cheek was flying;
By fits so ashy pale she grew
Her maidens thought
her dying.
Yet keenest powers to see and hear
Seem’d in her frame residing;
Before the
watch-dog prick’d his ear
She heard her lover’s
riding;
Ere scarce a distant form was kenn’d
She
knew and waved to greet him,
And o’er the battlement
did bend
As on the wing to meet him.
He
came—he pass’d—an heedless gaze
As o’er some
stranger glancing:
Her welcome, spoke in faltering
phrase,
Lost in his courser’s prancing—
The
castle-arch, whose hollow tone
Returns each whisper
spoken,
Could scarcely catch the feeble moan
Which told her heart was broken.
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