The fountain is gleaming in morning light,
But there kneels beside it a child of night;
For to her the summers no sunshine bring;
Oh! what doth she seek at that blessed spring?
The home of her youth she has left afar,
And the promise of light was her spirit’s star;
But her perils and pilgrimage all are past,
And that hallowed fount she hath found at last.
For they said that a spell in its waters lay,
To banish the blight of her life away.
And the prayer of her faith it grows fervent now,
While signing the cross upon breast and brow.
Oh stranger of darkness, kneel not there,
Tho’ the fountain with freshness fills the air,
And its waters are sweet as the summer rain,
But they cannot give thee the day again.
Yet, tell us, ye searching ones and wise,
Oh! whence did these ancient dreams arise
Of the holy and hidden things, which still
Were mighty to heal all human ill?
They were stars that blest in their hour of might,
And gems that shone with a saving light;
They were trees of life in the trackless wilds,
And the sea had its own immortal isles;
And through all her changes, the world’s hope clings
To the healing power of her sacred springs;
For around them the faith of nations hung,
And sages have trusted, and poets sung,
And pilgrims have sought them by night and day,
Over mountain and desert far away;
But they sought in vain in the earth or seas,
Oh, tell us whence are such dreams as these!
Say, are they of some far deathless clime,
Thus casting its shadows of hope on time;
Or voices of promise, sent before
The day when earth’s curse shall be no more?
We know not but life hath the cloud and pall,
And woe for the heart’s hope, more than all,
For its precious seed in the fruitless ground,
And its bread on the waters never found.
Oh! is there not many a weary heart,
That hath seen the greenness of life depart,
Yet muted in vain in a powerless spell,
Like her who knelt by the Holy Well!