In Cornwall and Across the Sea :: :: University of Virginia Library

I sprang to life upon the heights,
Which frown on Zennor and the ocean.
A fairy, born for daring flights
From rock to rock, for wayward motion
'Twixt overarching banks of heather
On the wild moorlands of my birth,
A mate for gossamer or feather
Almost too pure a thing for earth.

Impatient of my tardy growth,
I hastened down toward the valley,
Like many, who repent it, loath
In childhood's fairyland to dally.
I grew, with gifts of tribute waters
By humbler sister fairies brought,
Until, of all the mountain's daughters
The greatest, I the lowlands sought.

I scorned my soft brown moorland bed,
I scorned the gleaming floor of gravel,
Which stained my feet not, as I sped
Upon my downward path of travel.
I longed to show a crowded city
My pure, wild beauty, knowing not
That hunger's victims cannot pity
Or praise, but only bruise and blot.

In quest of praise in peopled lands
I gained a little mining village,
Only, with my free limbs in bands,
To find myself constrained to pillage
The bright ore from the mountain bower
Where it and I were born, and drive
The mighty wheel that yields the power
Which animates the busy hive.

Freed from the wheel I hoped in vain
Once more at my caprice to ramble,
To cross the open moors again
Amid the heather, brake and bramble.
In vain, still captive, was I hurried
'Twixt narrow wooden walls to find,
When I emerged befoamed and flurried,
Only some other wheel to grind.

At last, my captors I escaped,
Only to find the wished-for city,
Through which my passage now I shaped,
A sight to move my wrath and pity.
My banks were void of leaf or flower,
My path as closely straitened in
With vice and want in all their power,
With views of strife and smoke and sin.

My only hope was now the sea,
The pure, untainted, fragrant ocean.
Might not to mingle waters be
A cleansing, health-restoring potion?
Were not the Cornish sands a-sparkle,
The Cornish seas of that rare hue,
Which, as they grow alight or darkle,
Varies from beryl-green to blue?

Alas! the seas and sands were bright,
Until the mountain's fairy daughter
Defiled their pureness, quenched their light,
By contact with her sullied water.
Stained was I, with my violence, ruddy
When I the mountain's wealth out-forced;
And now the very seas turned bloody,
Fouled by my touch, where'er I coursed.

O welcome, welcome, open sea!
O welcome, welcome, stormy ocean!
Though lost in your wide arms I be,
Lost is my stain in your commotion.
My feet upon the moor are spotless,
But I my guilty head must hide,
No matter where, so it be blotless,
And what I plunge it in be wide.