The Return Home, 3

My heart, my heart is mournful,
Yet May is gleaming like gold;
I stand, ’gainst the linden reclining,
High over the bastion old.

Beneath, the moat’s blue water
Flows peacefully along;
A boy his bark is steering,
And fishes, and pipes his song.

Beyond, in pleasing confusion,
In distant and chequer’d array,
Are men, and villas, and gardens,
And cattle, woods, meadows so gay.

The maidens are bleaching the linen,
And spring on the grass, like deer
The mill-wheel’s powd’ring diamonds,
Its distant murmur I hear.

Beside the old grey tower
A sentry-box is set;
A red-accoutred fellow
Walks up and down there yet.

He’s playing with his musket,
While gleameth the sun o’erhead;
He first presents and shoulders--
I would that he’d shoot me dead!