dainty mouths to eat,

Next churned butter, whipped up cream,

Fed their poultry, sat and sewed;

Talked as modest maidens should

Lizzie with an open heart,

Laura in an absent dream,

One content, one sick in part;

One warbling for the mere bright day’s delight,

One longing for the night.

At length slow evening came —

They went with pitchers to the reedy brook;

Lizzie most placid in her look,

Laura most like a leaping flame.

They drew the gurgling water from its deep

Lizzie plucked purple and rich golden flags,

Then turning homeward said: “The sunset flushes

Those furthest loftiest crags;

Come, Laura, not another maiden lags,

No wilful squirrel wags,

The beasts and birds are fast asleep”.

But Laura loitered still among the rushes

And said the bank was steep.

And said the hour was early still,

The dew not fallen, the wind not chill:

Listening ever, but not catching

The customary cry,

“Come buy, come buy”,

With its iterated jingle

Of sugar-baited words:

Not for all her watching

Once discerning even one goblin

Racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling;

Let alone the herds

That used to tramp along the glen,

In groups or single,

Of brisk fruit-merchant men.

Till Lizzie urged, “O Laura, come,

I hear the fruit-call, but I dare not look:

You should not loiter longer at this brook:

Come with me home.

The stars rise, the moon bends her arc,

Each glow-worm winks her spark,

Let us get home before the night grows dark;

For clouds may gather even

Though this is summer weather,

Put out the lights and drench us through;

Then if we lost our way what should we do?"

Laura turned cold as stone

To find her sister heard that cry alone,

That goblin cry,

“Come buy our fruits, come buy”.

Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit?

Must she no more such succous pasture find,

Gone deaf and blind?

Her tree of life drooped from the root:

She said not one word in her heart’s sore ache;

But peering thro’ the dimness, naught discerning,

Trudged home, her pitcher dripping all the way;

So crept to bed, and lay

Silent ’til Lizzie slept;

Then sat up in a passionate yearning,

And gnashed her teeth for balked 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 gray;

She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn

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,

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,

Fetched honey, kneaded cakes of wheat,

Brought water from the brook:

But sat down listless in the chimney-nook

And would not eat.

Tender Lizzie could not bear

To watch her sister’s cankerous care,

Yet not to share.

She night and morning

Caught the goblins’ cry:

“Come buy our orchard fruits,

Come buy, come buy”.

Beside the brook, along the glen

She heard the tramp of goblin men,

The voice and stir

Poor Laura could not hear;

Longed to buy fruit to comfort her,

But feared to pay too dear.

She thought of Jeanie in her grave,

Who should have been a bride;

But who for joys brides hope to have

Fell sick and died

In her gay prime,

In earliest winter-time,

With the first glazing rime,

With the first snow-fall of crisp winter-time.

Till Laura, dwindling,

Seemed knocking at Death’s door:

Then Lizzie weighed no more

Better and worse,

But put a silver penny in her purse,

Kissed Laura, crossed the heath with clumps of furze

At twilight, halted by the brook,

And for the first time in her life

Began to listen and look.

Laughed every goblin

When they spied her peeping:

Came towards her hobbling,

Flying, running, leaping,

Puffing and blowing,

Chuckling, clapping, crowing,

Clucking and gobbling,

Mopping and mowing,

Full of airs and graces,

Pulling wry faces,

Demure grimaces,

Cat-like and rat-like,

Ratel and wombat-like,

Snail-paced in a hurry,

Parrot-voiced and whistler,

Helter-skelter, hurry-skurry,

Chattering like magpies,

Fluttering like pigeons,

Gliding like fishes, —

Hugged her and kissed her;

Squeezed and caressed her;

Stretched up their dishes,

Panniers and plates:

“Look at our apples

Russet and dun,

Bob at our cherries

Bite at our peaches,