GOBLIN MARKET
Silent till Lizzie slept;
Then sat up in a passionate yearning,
And gnashed her teeth for baulked desire, and wept
As if her heart would break.
Day after day, night after night,
Laura kept watch in vain
In sullen silence of exceeding pain.
She never caught again the goblin cry :
" Come buy, come buy " ;—
She never spied the goblin men
Hawking their fruits along the glen :
But when the noon waxed bright
Her hair grew thin and grey ;
She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth tiqrn
To swift decay and burn
Her fire away.
One day remembering her kernel-stone
She set it by a wall that faced the south ;
Dewed it with tears, hoped for a root.
Watched for a waxing shoot, 20
But there came none ;
It never saw the sun,
It never felt the trickling moisture run :
While with sunk eyes and faded mouth
She dreamed of melons, as a traveller sees
False waves in desert drouth
With shade of leaf-crowned trees,
And burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze.
She no more swept the house,
Tended the fowls or cows, s
Fetched honey, kneaded cakes of wrheat,
Brought water from the brook : ...
But sat down listless in the chimney^n6€5l<
And would not eat.
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