No. 21 Love Among the Maidens
Yonder choir of virgins see
Through the spring advancing,
Where the sun’s warmth, fair and free,
From the green leaves glancing,
Weaves a lattice of light gloom
And soft sunbeams o’er us,
’Neath the linden-trees in bloom,
For the Cyprian chorus.
In this vale where blossoms blow,
Blooming, summer-scented,
’Mid the lilies row by row,
Spreads a field flower-painted.
Here the blackbirds through the dale
Each to each are singing,
And the jocund nightingale
Her fresh voice is flinging.
See the maidens crowned with rose
Sauntering through the grasses!
Who could tell the mirth of those
Laughing, singing lasses?
Or with what a winning grace
They their charms discover,
Charms of form and blushing face,
To the gazing lover?
Down the flowery greenwood glade
As I chanced to wander,
From bright eyes a serving-maid
Shot Love’s arrows yonder;
I for her, ’mid all the crew
Of the girls of Venus,
Wait and yearn until I view
Love spring up between us.
Another lyric of complicated rhyming structure introduces a not dissimilar motive, with touches that seem, in like manner, to indicate its German origin. It may be remarked that the lover’s emotion has here unusual depth, a strain of sehnsucht; and the picture of the mother followed by her daughter in the country-dance suggests the domesticity of Northern races.