I shudder at each, but the fiend reads on!

    Oh, sweet as the lapse of water at noon

    O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree,

    The sigh of the wind in the woods of June,

    Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea,

    Or the low soft music, perchance, which seems

    To float through the slumbering singer's dreams.

    So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone,

    Of her in whose features I sometimes look,

    As I sit at eve by her side alone,

    And we read by turns, from the self-same book,

    Some tale perhaps of the olden time,

    Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme.

    Then when the story is one of woe,—

    Some prisoner's plaint through his dungeon-bar,

    Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low,

    Her voice sinks down like a moan afar;

    And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail,

    And his face looks on me worn and pale.

    And when she reads some merrier song,

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