“At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly / To the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye.”

Moore wrote it as one of the Irish Melodies, a set of songs that set new English words to old airs, and this one pairs a night journey with the hope of a visit from the beloved's spirit. The archaic thine is a deliberate archaism that puts the longing in an older, more formal key.