The Lesson of the Water-Mill
stanzas from “An O’er True Tale,” which is concerned with woman’s inhumanity to woman:
See yon pale form, in garret high—
Wearily stitching, on and on;
Oh! listen to the deep, low sigh!
Ah! it should melt a heart of stone.
Her face—once fair, of Grecian mold—
Now pale and wan with carking care;
Her eyes were bright, she once was told;
What is she now? a case not rare.
The first stanza of the poem which gives the book its title is as follows:
Oh! listen to the Water-Mill, through all the livelong day,
As the clicking of the wheel, wears hour by hour away;
How languidly the Autumn wind, doth stir the withered leaves,
As on the field the Reaper’s sing, while binding up the sheaves,
A solemn proverb strikes my mind, and as a spell is cast,
“The mill will never grind, with water that is past.”
Nobody seems to have doubted that this poem was entirely original with General McCallum, and the discovery that it was not came about entirely by chance. Some years subsequently,
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