Maiden, the sunshine of thine eye,
Flashing my joyous waves along,
The magic of thy soul-lit smile,
Have waked my murmuring voice to song.

Winding through Hispania's mountains,
Watering her sunburnt plains,
I, from earliest time, have gladdened
Dwellers on these wide domains.

I have watched succeeding races,
Peopling my fertile strand,
Marked each varying lovely model,
Moulded by Nature's plastic hand.

Striving still to reach perfection,
Ruthless, she broke each beauteous mould;
Some blemish still deformed her creature,
Some alloy still defiled her gold.

The Iberian girl has often bathed,
Her limbs in my delighted flood,
And no Acteon came to startle
This very Dian of the wood.

The stately Roman maid has loitered,
Pensive, upon my flowering shore,
Shedding some pearly drops to think,
Italia she may see no more.

While gazing on my placid face,
She meditates her distant home;
And rears, as upon Tiber's banks,
The towers of imperial Rome.

The blue-eyed daughter of the Goth,
Fresh from her northern forest-home,
In rude nobility of race,
Foreshadowed her who now has come.

The loveliest offspring of the Moor
Beside my moon-lit current sat;
And, sighing, sung her hopeless love,
In strains, that I remember yet.

The Christian knight, in captive chains,
The conqueror of her heart has proved;
His own, in far Castilian bower,
He bears her blandishments unmoved.

Thus Nature tried her 'prentice hand,
Become, at last, an artist true;
In inspiration's happiest mood,
She tried again, and moulded you.

Maiden, from my crystal surface,
May thy image never fade;
Longing, longing, to embrace thee,
I, alas! embrace a shade.

Fainter glows each beauteous image,
Thy beauty vanishing before;
I will clasp thy lovely shadow,
Fate will grant to me no more.

If the verses were not very good, L'Isle was ready to acknowledge it;
but, in fact, he had not the fear of criticism before his eyes; for
when did lady ever criticise verses made in her praise? But he had
reckoned without his host. Though Lady Mabel recited them exceedingly
well, in a way that showed that she must have read them over many
times, and dwelt upon them, there was an under-current of ridicule
running through her tones and action--for she had personified the
river-god--and when she w