| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | X. The Pity of It
The Water-nymph and the Boy | | By Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel (1834–1894) |
| | | I FLUNG me round him, | |
| I drew him under; | |
| I clung, I drown’d him, | |
| My own white wonder! | |
| |
| Father and mother, | 5 |
| Weeping and wild, | |
| Came to the forest, | |
| Calling the child, | |
| Came from the palace, | |
| Down to the pool, | 10 |
| Calling my darling, | |
| My beautiful! | |
| Under the water, | |
| Cold and so pale! | |
| Could it be love made | 15 |
| Beauty to fail? | |
| |
| Ah me! for mortals: | |
| In a few moons, | |
| If I had left him, | |
| After some Junes | 20 |
| He would have faded, | |
| Faded away, | |
| He, the young monarch, whom | |
| All would obey, | |
| Fairer than day; | 25 |
| Alien to springtime, | |
| Joyless and grey, | |
| He would have faded, | |
| Faded away, | |
| Moving a mockery, | 30 |
| Scorn’d of the day! | |
| Now I have taken him | |
| All in his prime, | |
| Saved from slow poisoning | |
| Pitiless Time, | 35 |
| Fill’d with his happiness, | |
| One with the prime, | |
| Saved from the cruel | |
| Dishonour of Time. | |
| Laid him, my beautiful, | 40 |
| Laid him to rest, | |
| Loving, adorable, | |
| Softly to rest, | |
| Here in my crystalline, | |
| Here in my breast! | 45 | | | |
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