Page:Poems Holley.djvu/143

THE LADY CECILE.

Sitting alone in the windy tower,
 While the waves leap high, or are low at rest,
What does she think of, hour by hour,
 With her strange eyes bent on the distant west,
 And a fresh white rose on her withered breast,
What does she think of, hour by hour?
            The Lady Cecile.

Low under the lattice, day by day,
 White homeward sails like swallows come,
But the sad eyes look afar and away,
 And the sailors' songs as they near their home,
 No glance may win, for she sitteth dumb,
With her sad eyes looking afar and away,
            The Lady Cecile.

Just forty years has she dwelt alone
 With an ancient servant, grim and gray.
Sat alone under sun and moon;
 But once each year, on the third of June,
 She treads the creaking staircase down,
But back in her tower with the dying day,
            Is the Lady Cecile.