The Pilgrims of the Rhine

But turn the eye to life's sequestered vale / And lowly roofs remote in hamlets green. / Oft in my boyhood where the moss-grown pale / Fenced quiet graves, a female form was seen; / Each eve she sought the melancholy ground, / And lingering paused, and wistful looked around.

If yet some footstep rustled through the grass, / Timorous she shrunk, and watched the shadow pass; / Then, when the spot lay lone amidst the gloom, / Crept to one grave too humble for a tomb, / There silent bowed her face above the dead, / For, if in prayer, the prayer was inly said; / Still as the moonbeam, paused her quiet shade, / Still as the moonbeam, through the yews to fade.