It shone like soft clouds round the moon;
Her noiseless feet, like melting sleet,
Gleamed white a moment, then were gone.

'What seek you now on this bleak moor brow,
Where wanders that form from heaven descending?'
It was thus I said as her graceful head
The spirit above my couch was bending.

'This is my home where whirlwinds blow,
Where snowdrifts round my path are swelling;
'Tis many a year, 'tis long ago,
Since I beheld another dwelling.

'When thick and fast the smothering blast
I've welcomed the winter on the plain,
If my cheek grew pale in its loudest gale,
May I never tread the hills again.

'The shepherd had died on the mountain-side,
But my ready aid was near him then;
I led him back o'er the hidden track
And gave him to his native glen.

'When tempests roar on the lonely shore
I light my beacon with seaweeds dry,
And it flings its fire through the darkness dire
And gladdens the sailor's hopeless eye.