Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Robert Leighton 182269The Dried-up Fountain
O
I know a dried-up fountain, overgrown
With herbs, the haunt of legendary toad,
And grass, by Nature sown.
No living ears its babbling tongue has caught;
But often, as I pass, I see it fill’d
And running o’er with thought.
The blue-ey’d maiden stooping o’er its brim,
And smoothing in its glass her locks of gold,
Lest she should meet with him.
Her sweet confusion when she hears him come.
No tryst had they, though every evening he
Carries her pitchers home.
At thirsty noon, and rests him by its brink;
The dusty pedlar lays aside his load,
And pauses there to drink.
When busy parents work in shop and field.
The swallows, too, find there the loamy clay
When ’neath the eaves they build.
Leaves them to drink, while his mechanic skill
Within the brook sets up, with inward joy,
His tiny water-mill.
And rest has come to laborer and team,
I hear the runnel through the long grass creep,
As ’t were a whispering dream.
Children and wanderers, are in their graves;
And where the fountain flow’d a greener grass—
Its In Memoriam—waves.