I was a little maid When here we came to live From somewhere by the sea. Men spoke a foreign tongue There where we used to be When I was merry and young, Too young to feel afraid; The fisher folk would give A kind strange word to me, 90 There by the foreign sea: I don't know where it was, But I remember still Our cottage on a hill, And fields of flowering grass On that fair foreign shore. I liked my old home best, But this was pleasant too: So here we made our nest And here I grew. 100 And now and then my Lady In riding past our door Would nod to Nurse and speak, Or stoop and pat my cheek; And I was always ready To hold the field-gate wide For my Lady to go through; My Lady in her veil So seldom put aside, My Lady grave and pale. 110 I often sat to wonder Who might my parents be, For I knew of something under My simple-seeming state. Nurse never talked to me Of mother or of father, But watched me early and late With kind suspicious cares: Or not suspicious, rather Anxious, as if she knew 120 Some secret I might gather And smart for unawares. Thus I grew. But Nurse waxed old and grey, Bent and weak with years. There came a certain day That she lay upon her bed Shaking her palsied head, With words she gasped to say Which had to stay unsaid. 130 Then with a jerking hand Held out so piteously She gave a ring to me Of gold wrought curiously, A ring which she had worn Since the day I was born, She once had said to me: I slipped it on my finger; Her eyes were keen to linger On my hand that slipped it on; 140 Then she sighed one rattling sigh And stared on with sightless eye:-- The one who loved me was gone. How long I stayed alone With the corpse I never knew, For I fainted dead as stone: When I came to life once more I was down upon the floor, With neighbours making ado To bring me back to life. 150 I heard the sexton's wife Say: 'Up, my lad, and run To tell it at the Hall; She was my Lady's nurse, And done can't be undone. I'll watch by this poor lamb. I guess my Lady's purse Is always open to such: I'd run up on my crutch A cripple as I am,' 160 (For cramps had vexed her much) 'Rather than this dear heart Lack one to take her part.' For days day after day On my weary bed I lay Wishing the time would pass; Oh, so wishing that I was Likely to pass away: For the one friend whom I knew Was dead, I knew no other, 170 Neither father nor mother; And I, what should I do? One day the sexton's wife Said: 'Rouse yourself, my dear: My Lady has driven down From the Hall into the town, And we think she's coming here. Cheer up, for life is life.'