Page:Poems Rossetti.djvu/35

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GOBLIN MARKET.
11
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