| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
| |
| The Dried-up Fountain |
| | | Robert Leighton (1822–69) |
| |
| |
| OUTSIDE the village, by the public road, | |
| I know a dried-up fountain, overgrown | |
| With herbs, the haunt of legendary toad, | |
| And grass, by Nature sown. | |
| |
| I know not where its trickling life was still’d; | 5 |
| No living ears its babbling tongue has caught; | |
| But often, as I pass, I see it fill’d | |
| And running o’er with thought. | |
| |
| I see it as it was in days of old, | |
| The blue-ey’d maiden stooping o’er its brim, | 10 |
| And smoothing in its glass her locks of gold, | |
| Lest she should meet with him. | |
| |
| She knows that he is near, yet I can see | |
| Her sweet confusion when she hears him come. | |
| No tryst had they, though every evening he | 15 |
| Carries her pitchers home. | |
| |
| The ancient beggar limps along the road | |
| At thirsty noon, and rests him by its brink; | |
| The dusty pedlar lays aside his load, | |
| And pauses there to drink. | 20 |
| |
| And there the village children come to play, | |
| When busy parents work in shop and field. | |
| The swallows, too, find there the loamy clay | |
| When ’neath the eaves they build. | |
| |
| When cows at eve come crooning home, the boy | 25 |
| Leaves them to drink, while his mechanic skill | |
| Within the brook sets up, with inward joy, | |
| His tiny water-mill. | |
| |
| And when the night is hush’d in summer sleep, | |
| And rest has come to laborer and team, | 30 |
| I hear the runnel through the long grass creep, | |
| As ’t were a whispering dream. | |
| |
| Alas! ’t is all a dream. Lover and lass, | |
| Children and wanderers, are in their graves; | |
| And where the fountain flow’d a greener grass— | 35 |
| Its In Memoriam—waves. | |
| |
|
|
|
