Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Germany: Vols. XVII–XVIII. 1876–79.

Rhine, the River

The Lorelei

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907)

A Rhine Legend

YONDER we see it from the steamer’s deck,

The haunted Mountain of the Lorelei,—

The o’erhanging crags sharp-cut against a sky

Clear as a sapphire without flaw or fleck.

’T was here the Siren lay in wait to wreck

The fisher-lad. At dusk, as he passed by,

Perchance he ’d hear her tender amorous sigh,

And, seeing the wondrous whiteness of her neck,

Perchance would halt, and lean towards the shore;

Then she by that soft magic which she had

Would lure him, and in gossamers of her hair,

Gold upon gold, would wrap him o’er and o’er,

Wrap him, and sing to him, and set him mad,

Then drag him down to no man knoweth where.