At length slow evening came: 
They went with pitchers to the reedy brook;
Lizzie most placid in her look,
Laura most like a leaping flame. 
They drew the gurgling water from its deep;
Lizzie plucked purple and rich golden flags, 220
Then turning homeward said:  ’The sunset flushes
Those furthest loftiest crags;
Come, Laura, not another maiden lags,
No wilful squirrel wags,
The beasts and birds are fast asleep.’ 
But Laura loitered still among the rushes
And said the bank was steep.

And said the hour was early still
The dew not fall’n, the wind not chill: 
Listening ever, but not catching 230
The customary cry,
‘Come buy, come buy,’
With its iterated jingle
Of sugar-baited words: 
Not for all her watching
Once discerning even one goblin
Racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling;
Let alone the herds
That used to tramp along the glen,
In groups or single, 240
Of brisk fruit-merchant men.

Till Lizzie urged, ’O Laura, come;
I hear the fruit-call but I dare not look: 
You should not loiter longer at this brook: 
Come with me home. 
The stars rise, the moon bends her arc,
Each glowworm winks her spark,
Let us get home before the night grows dark: 
For clouds may gather
Though this is summer weather, 250
Put out the lights and drench us through;
Then if we lost our way what should we do?’

Laura turned cold as stone
To find her sister heard that cry alone,
That goblin cry,
‘Come buy our fruits, come buy.’ 
Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit? 
Must she no more such succous pasture find,
Gone deaf and blind? 
Her tree of life drooped from the root:  260
She said not one word in her heart’s sore ache;
But peering thro’ the dimness, nought discerning,
Trudged home, her pitcher dripping all the way;
So crept to bed, and lay
Silent till Lizzie slept;
Then sat up in a passionate yearning,
And gnashed her teeth for baulked desire, and wept
As if her heart would break.

Day after day, night after night,
Laura kept watch in vain 270
In sullen silence of exceeding pain. 
She never caught again the goblin cry: 
’Come buy, come buy;’—­
She never spied the goblin men
Hawking their fruits along the glen: 
But when the noon waxed bright
Her hair grew thin and grey;
She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn
To swift decay and burn
Her fire away. 280

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 290
With shade of leaf-crowned trees,
And burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze.