"Annie Lisle"

Annie Lisle

All that long day of bitter pain
        The sun shone down the hill,
Above whose crest continually,
        The clouds pushed, white and still.

But when the dove of twilight came,
        With murmurs soft and deep,
To gather in her suffering ones
        And brood them all to sleep,

Oh, then I dreamed I was a child
        Upon my sister’s breast,
Without a longing or desire
        Save for that sheltered rest.

Oh, was it but a feverish dream
        Beneath the twilight’s wing,
Or did I feel her tender arms,
        And did I hear her sing,

As in the old and innocent years,
        Hovered by twilight’s dove,
She used to sit and sing to me
        The plaintive song I love:

“Wave, willow; murmur, waters;
        Gentle sunbeams, smile;
Earthly music cannot waken
        Lovely Annie Lisle.”

"Annie Lisle" as it appears in Ella Higginson's The Voice of April-Land and Other Poems (1903).