By Andrew Lang
My lover dwelt in a Northern land.
A grey tower in a forest green
Was hers, and far on either hand
The long wash of the waves was seen,
And leagues on leagues of yellow sand,
The woven forest boughs between.
And through the silver Northern light
The sunset slowly died away,
And herds of strange deer, lily-white,
Stole forth among the branches grey;
About the coming of the light,
They fled like ghosts before the day.
I know not if the forest green
Still girdles round that castle grey;
I know not if the boughs between
The white deer vanish ere the day;
Above my love the grass is green,
My heart is colder than the clay.
I'm not sure I would use this as a representative of romance (as Henry A. Beers seems to have done by including before the preface to his A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century), but there is a lot in it that I would consider romantic (and Romantic) and it reminds me of a lot of things I have read -- The Lord of the Rings, Rebecca, The Last Unicorn, some of L.J. Smith's books from the Night World series...I could probably go on. Doesn't it have that lonely haunting quality that works so well for romance?
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