The Pine Lady

O have you seen the Pine Lady,

Or heard her how she sings?

Have you heard her play

Your soul away

On a harp with moonbeam strings?

In a palace all of the night-black pine

She hides like a queen all day,

Till a moonbeam knocks on her secret tree,

And she opens her door with a silver key

While the village clocks

Are striking bed

Nine times sleepily.

O come and hear the Pine Lady,

Up in the haunted wood!

The stars are rising, the moths are flitting,

The owls are calling,

The dew is falling;

And, high in the boughs

Of her haunted house

The moon and she are sitting.

Out on the moor the night-jar drones

Rough-throated love,

The beetle comes

With his sudden drums

And many a silent unseen thing

Frightens your cheek with its ghostly wing;

While there above,

In a palace builded of needles and cones,

The pine is telling the moon her love,

Telling her love on the moonbeam strings—

O have you seen the Pine Lady?

Or heard her how she sings!

—Richard Le Gallienne.