IT is from Nectan’s mossy steep | |
| The foamy waters flash and leap; | |
| It is where shrinking wild-flowers grow | |
| They lave the nymph that dwells below. | |
| |
| But wherefore in this far-off dell | 5 |
| The reliques of a human cell, | |
| Where the sad stream and lonely wind | |
| Bring man no tidings of his kind? | |
| |
| “Long years agone,” the old man said,— | |
| ’T was told him by his grandsire dead,— | 10 |
| “One day two ancient sisters came; | |
| None there could tell their race or name. | |
| |
| “Their speech was not in Cornish phrase, | |
| Their garb had signs of loftier days; | |
| Slight food they took from hands of men, | 15 |
| They withered slowly in that glen. | |
| |
| “One died,—the other’s sunken eye | |
| Gushed till the fount of tears was dry; | |
| A wild and withering thought had she, | |
| ‘I shall have none to weep for me.’ | 20 |
| |
| “They found her silent at the last, | |
| Bent in the shape wherein she passed, | |
| Where her lone seat long used to stand, | |
| Her head upon her shrivelled hand.” | |
| |
| Did fancy give this legend birth,— | 25 |
| The grandame’s tale for winter hearth? | |
| Or some dead bard, by Nectan’s stream, | |
| People these banks with such a dream? | |
| |
| We know not; but it suits the scene | |
| To think such wild things here have been: | 30 |
| What spot more meet could grief or sin | |
| Choose, at the last, to wither in? | |
| |
