No earthly tongue could ever tell; Far less could this with proof be said That Martha Ray about this time up the mountain often climb. XV. And all that winter, when at night For many a time and oft were heard Cries coming from the mountain head : Some plainly living voices were; I cannot think, whate'er they say, XVI. But that she goes to this old Thorn, For one day with my telescope, XVII. 'Twas mist and rain, and storm and rain : A wind full ten times over. I looked around, I thought I saw Instead of jutting crag, I found XVIII. I did not speak-I saw her face; And there she sits, until the moon As all the country know, She shudders, and you hear her cry, "But what's the Thorn? and what the pond? And what the hill of moss to her? And what the creeping breeze that comes "I cannot tell; but some will say VOL. II. L She hanged her baby on the tree; The little Babe was buried there, XX. I've heard, the moss is spotted red I do not think she could! And that it looks at you; The baby looks at you again. XXI. And some had sworn an oath that she The grass-it shook upon the ground! The little Babe lies buried there, Beneath that hill of moss so fair. XXII. I cannot tell how this may be, But plain it is the Thorn is bound And this I know, full many a time, When all the stars shone clear and bright, 'Oh misery! oh misery! Oh woe is me! oh misery!' 1798. XXIV. HART-LEAP WELL. [WRITTEN at Town-end, Grasmere. The first eight stanzas were composed extempore one winter evening in the cottage; when, after having tired myself with labouring at an awkward passage in "The Brothers," I started with a sudden impulse to this to get rid of the other, and finished it in a day or two. My Sister and I had past the place a few weeks before in our wild winter journey from Sockburn on the banks of the Tees to Grasmere. A peasant whom we met near the spot told us the story so far as concerned the name of the Well, and the Hart, and pointed out the Stones. Both the Stones and the Well are objects that may easily be missed; the tradition by this time may be extinct in the neighbourhood: the man who related it to us was very old.] Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water, about five miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that leads from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable Chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second Part of the following Poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there described them. THE Knight had ridden down from Wensley Moor "Another horse!"-That shout the vassal heard Joy sparkled in the prancing courser's eyes; A rout this morning left Sir Walter's Hall, Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind, Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain : The Knight hallooed, he cheered and chid them on Where is the throng, the tumult of the race? |