Lord Ullin's Daughter

This is one piece I've been in love with ever since I read it in school. It has oodles of sub-text, although I didn't learn till much later that I loved it because of that.

Thomas Campbell has captured, oh-so-elegantly and viscerally, the dilemma of a girl, torn between her father and the man she loves. I nearly always break-down at the point where Lord Ullin wails, "My daughter.. oh, my daughter" as he sees his child (will a parent see offspring as anything more than a child?) swallowed by the waves he has forced her to brave. Poetic justice, generation gaps, parental love, and the absolute certainty that lover takes precedence over daddy makes this at once a tender and cruel piece.

Thomas Campbell's "Lord Ullin's Daughter"