Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By The Minstrel’s Love

Alonzo Lewis (1794–1861)

MY love is a lady slender and fair,

Whose mantle is light as the thin blue air,

And falls from her neck as floatingly,

As the vapor that rolls o’er a moonlight sea

The clustering wreaths of her long thick hair,

Curl over her forehead, as dark and fair,

As the nightly clouds that heavily flow

Over star-loving Sunapee’s mount of snow.

Like the moon which looks out from a cloudy sky,

Is the soul which beams from her large blue eye,

Where utterless thoughts appear and flee,

Like shadows of clouds o’er a sunny sea.

In the sleepless night, and the ceaseless stir

Of the busy day, my thought is with her,

And memory and love are with sighing repaid,

Because of the form of that slender maid.