Laughing eyes look over the bridge
And seem, as they smile, to say,
Fisherman, have you caught to-day
Any fish? And I stood upon a ridge
Looking down at my line in the stream below.
I look again, and within my heart
The thoughts of a past existence start,
And I live again in the long ago.
For she just so look'd in her beauty and love,
That dear one, dead, when she spoke to me,
Where a Highland river is running free
Over the rocks with the sun above.
I was fishing alone by the bridge when she came,
And such was the light on her glowing face
That my heart leapt up to give her a place,
And after a year she changed her name.
We were happy; and life had the charms
That glow in the depths of a summer sky;
But a cloud rose up when none else were nigh,
And my darling wife lay dead in my arms.
Dead long ago, but still when I see
A fair, young face looking sweetly on,
As the fisherman steps over tree and stone,
Then I think of her that once smiled on me.