Текст песни
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 looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June
I to her cottage bent my way
Beneath an evening moon
Upon the moon I fixed my eye
All o'er the wide lea
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me
And now we reached the orchard plot
And as we climbed the hill
The sinking moon to Lucy's cot
Came nearer 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 stopped
When down behind the cottage roof
At once the bright moon dropped
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 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 wheel
Beside an English fire
Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed
The bowers where Lucy played