The Spring

In brier and grass the altar buried sleeps,
Where falling drop by drop the nameless spring
Fills the lone vale with plaintive murmuring:
It is the Nymph that o'er Oblivion weeps.

This useless mirror which no wavelet sweeps,
The dove now seldom kisses with her wing,
And but the moon, through dark skies wandering,
Her pallid face alone upon it keeps.

At times a passing herdsman here delays;
He drinks; then pours the drops, his thirst all flown,
From out his hand upon the road's old stone.

In this the ancestral gesture he betrays,
The Roman cippus to his eye unknown
With patera near the libatory vase.