In entering the town, where the bright river Shrinks in its white stone bed, old thoughts return Of how a quiet queen was nurtured here In the pale, shadowed ruin on the height; Of how, when the hoar town was new and clean And had not grown a part of the gaunt fells That peered down into it, the burghers wove On their small, fireside looms green, famous webs To cling on lissome, tower-dwelling ladies Who rode the hills swaying like green saplings, Or mask tall, hardy outlaws from pursuit Down beechen caverns and green under-lights, (The rude, vain looms are gone, their beams are broken; Their webs are now not seen, but memory Still tangles in their mesh the dews they swept Like ruby sparks, the lights they took, the scents They held, the movement of their shapes and shades); Of how the Border burners in cold dawns Of Summer hurried North up the high vales Past smoking farmsteads that had lit the night And surf of crowding cattle; and of how A laughing prince of cursed, impossible hopes Rode through the little streets Northward to battle And to defeat, to be a fading thought, Belated in dead mountains of romance. A carver at his bench in a high gable Hears the sharp stream close under, far below Tinkle and rustle, and no other sound Arises there to him to change his thoughts Of the changed, silent town and the dead hands That made it and maintained it, and the need For handiwork and happy work and work To use and ease the mind if such sweet towns Are to be built again or live again.