Anna and Harland

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Within these wilds was Anna wont to rove
While Harland told his love in many a sigh,
But stern on Harland roll’d her brother’s eye,
They fought, they fell — her brother and her love!

To Death’s dark house did grief-worn Anna haste,
Yet here her pensive ghost delights to stay;
Oft pouring on the winds the broken lay —
And hark, I hear her — ’twas the passing blast.

I love to sit upon her tomb’s dark grass,
Then Memory backward rolls Time’s shadowy tide;
The tales of other days before me glide:
With eager thought I seize them as they pass;
For fair, tho’ faint, the forms of Memory gleam,
Like Heaven’s bright beauteous bow reflected in the stream.