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Page 28
On the meadow's verdant bosom
What glimmers there so white?
Have wreaths of snowy blossoms,
Soft-floating, fallen from heaven?
Ah, see! a tender infant!--
It plays with flowers, unwittingly;
It strives to grasp morn's golden beams.
O where, sweet stranger, where's your home?
Afar from unknown shores
The waves have wafted hither
This helpless little one.
Nay, clasp not, tender darling,
With tiny hand the flowers!
No hand returns the pressure,
The flowers are strange and mute.
They clothe themselves in beauty,
They breathe a rich perfume:
But cannot fold around you
A mother's loving arms;--
Far, far away that mother's fond embrace.
Life's early dawn just opening faint,
Your eye yet beaming heaven's own smile,
So soon your tenderest guardians gone;
Severe, poor child, your fate,--
All, all to you unknown.
A noble duke has crossed the mead,
And near you checked his steed's career:
Wonder and pity touch his heart;
With knowledge high, and manners pure,
He rears you,--makes his castle home your own.
How great, how infinite your gain!
Of all the land you bloom the loveliest;
Yet, ah! the priceless blessing,
The bliss of parents' fondness,
You left on strands unknown!"
Undine let fall her lute with a melancholy smile. The eyes of
Bertalda's noble foster-parents were filled with tears.
"Ah yes, it was so--such was the morning on which I found you, poor
orphan!" cried the duke, with deep emotion; "the beautiful singer is
certainly right: still
'The priceless blessing,
The bliss of parents' fondness,'
it was beyond our power to give you."
"But we must hear, also, what happened to the poor parents," said
Undine, as she struck the chords, and sung:--
"Through her chambers roams the mother
Searching, searching everywhere;
Seeks, and knows not what, with yearning,
Childless house still finding there.
Childless house!--O sound of anguish!
She alone the anguish knows,
There by day who led her dear one,
There who rocked its night-repose.
Beechen buds again are swelling,
Sunshine warms again the shore;
Ah, fond mother, cease your searching!
Comes the loved and lost no more.
Then when airs of eve are fresh'ning,
Home the father wends his way,
While with smiles his woe he's veiling,
Gushing tears his heart betray.
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