Melancholy (Coleridge)

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Stretch'd on a mouldered Abbey's broadest wall,
  Where ruining ivies propped the ruins steep—
Her folded arms wrapping her tattered pall,
  Had melancholy mus'd herself to sleep.
    The fern was press'd beneath her hair,
    The dark green adder's tongue was there;
And still as passed the flagging sea-gale weak,
The long lank leaf bowed fluttering o'er her cheek.

That pallid cheek was flushed: her eager look
  Beamed eloquent in slumber! Inly wrought,
    Imperfect sounds her moving lips forsook,
And her bent forehead worked with troubled thought.
    Strange was the dream—