Classic Poem

It is from Nectan's mossy steep,
The foamy waters flash and leap:
It is where shrinking wild-flowers grow,
They lave the nymph that dwells below.

But wherefore in this far-off dell,
The reliques of a human cell?
Where the sad stream and lonely wind
Bring man no tidings of his kind.

‘Long years agone,’ the old man said,
'Twas told him by his grandsire dead:
‘One day two ancient sisters came:
None there could tell their race or name;

‘Their speech was not in Cornish phrase,
Their garb had signs of loftier days;
Slight food they took from hands of men,
They withered slowly in that glen.

‘One died—the other's sunken eye
Gushed till the fount of tears was dry;
A wild and withering thought had she,
“I shall have none to weep for me.”

‘They found her silent at the last,
Bent in the shape wherein she passed;
Where her lone seat long used to stand,
Her head upon her shrivelled hand.’

Did fancy give this legend birth?
The grandame's tale for winter hearth:
Or some dead bard, by Nectan's stream,
People these banks with such a dream?

We know not: but it suits the scene,
To think such wild things here have been:
What spot more meet could grief or sin
Choose, at the last, to wither in?