| |
| “GET up, our Anna dear, from the weary spinning wheel’ | |
| For your father’s on the hill, and your mother is asleep; | |
| Come up above the crags, and we ’ll dance a highland reel | |
| Around the fairy thorn on the steep.” | |
| |
| At Anna Grace’s door ’t was thus the maidens cried, | 5 |
| Three merry maidens fair in kirtles of the green; | |
| And Anna laid the sock and the weary wheel aside, | |
| The fairest of the four, I ween. | |
| |
| They ’re glancing through the glimmer of the quiet eve, | |
| Away in milky wavings of neck and ankle bare; | 10 |
| The heavy-sliding stream in its sleeply song they leave, | |
| And the crags in the ghostly air; | |
| |
| And linking hand in hand, and singing as they go, | |
| The maids along the hill-side have ta’en their fearless way, | |
| Till they come to where the rowan trees in lovely beauty grow | 15 |
| Beside the Fairy Hawthorn gray. | |
| |
| The hawthorn stands between the ashes tall and slim, | |
| Like matron with her twin grand-daughters at her knee; | |
| The rowan berries cluster o’er her low head gray and dim | |
| In ruddy kisses sweet to see. | 20 |
| |
| The merry maidens four have ranged them in a row, | |
| Between each lovely couple a stately rowan stem, | |
| And away in mazes wavy like skimming birds they go,— | |
| Oh, never caroll’d bird like them! | |
| |
| But solemn is the silence of the silvery haze | 25 |
| That drinks away their voices in echoless repose, | |
| And dreamily the evening has still’d the haunted braes, | |
| And dreamier the gloaming grows. | |
| |
| And sinking one by one, like lark-notes from the sky | |
| When the falcon’s shadow saileth across the open shaw, | 30 |
| Are hush’d the maidens’ voices, as cowering down they lie | |
| In the flutter of their sudden awe. | |
| |
| For, from the air above and the grassy ground beneath, | |
| And from the mountain-ashes and the old white thorn between, | |
| A power of faint enchantment doth through their beings breathe, | 35 |
| And they sink down together on the green. | |
| |
| They sink together silent, and, stealing side by side, | |
| They fling their lovely arms o’er their drooping necks so fair, | |
| Then vainly strive again their naked arms to hide, | |
| For their shrinking necks again are bare. | 40 |
| |
| Thus clasp’d and prostrate all, with their heads together bow’d, | |
| Soft o’er their bosoms beating—the only human sound— | |
| They hear the silky footsteps of the silent fairy crowd, | |
| Like a river in the air, gliding round. | |
| |
| Nor scream can any raise, nor prayer can any say, | 45 |
| But wild, wild, the terror of the speechless three, | |
| For they feel fair Anna Grace drawn silently away, | |
| By whom they dare not look to see. | |
| |
| They feel their tresses twine with her parting locks of gold, | |
| And the curls elastic falling, as her head withdraws; | 50 |
| They feel her sliding arms from their tranced arms unfold, | |
| But they dare not look to see the cause: | |
| |
| For heavy on their senses the faint enchantment lies | |
| Through all that night of anguish and perilous amaze; | |
| And neither fear nor wonder can ope their quivering eyes, | 55 |
| Or their limbs from the cold ground raise, | |
| |
| Till out of night the earth has roll’d her dewy side, | |
| With every haunted mountain and streamy vale below; | |
| When, as the mist dissolves in the yellow morning-tide, | |
| The maidens’ trance dissolveth so. | 60 |
| |
| Then fly the ghastly three as swiftly as they may, | |
| And tell their tale of sorrow to anxious friends in vain: | |
| They pin’d away and died within the year and day, | |
| And ne’er was Anna Grace seen again. | |
| |
