Chimney sweeps -- Juvenile fiction; Fairy tales -- England
And to his right rose moor after moor, hill after hill, till they faded
away, blue into blue sky. But between him and those moors, and really at
his very feet, lay something, to which, as soon as Tom saw it, he
determined to go, for that was the place for him.
A deep, deep green and rocky valley, very narrow, and filled with wood;
but through the wood, hundreds of feet below him, he could see a clear
stream glance. Oh, if he could but get down to that stream! Then, by
the stream, he saw the roof of a little cottage, and a little garden set
out in squares and beds. And there was a tiny little red thing moving in
the garden, no bigger than a fly. As Tom looked down, he saw that it was
a woman in a red petticoat. Ah! perhaps she would give him something to
eat. And there were the church-bells ringing again. Surely there must
be a village down there. Well, nobody would know him, or what had
happened at the Place. The news could not have got there yet, even if
Sir John had set all the policemen in the county after him; and he could
get down there in five minutes.
Tom was quite right about the hue-and-cry not having got thither; for he
had come without knowing it, the best part of ten miles from Harthover;
but he was wrong about getting down in five minutes, for the cottage was
more than a mile off, and a good thousand feet below.
[Picture: Youth reclining near stream]
However, down he went; like a brave little man as he was, though he was
very footsore, and tired, and hungry, and thirsty; while the church-bells
rang so loud, he began to think that they must be inside his own head,
and the river chimed and tinkled far below; and this was the song which
it sang:—
_Clear and cool_, _clear and cool_,
_By laughing shallow_, _and dreaming pool_;
_Cool and clear_, _cool and clear_,
_By shining shingle_, _and foaming wear_;
_Under the crag where the ouzel sings_,
_And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings_,
_Undefiled_, _for the undefiled_;
_Play by me_, _bathe in me_, _mother and child_.
_Dank and foul_, _dank and foul_,
_By the smoky town in its murky cowl_;
_Foul and dank_, _foul and dank_,
_By wharf and sewer and slimy bank_;
_Darker and darker the farther I go_,
_Baser and baser the richer I grow_;
_Who dares sport with the sin-defiled_?
_Shrink from me_, _turn from me_, _mother and child_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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