Close following down this alley, one came near
The place where it descended sudden, sheer,
Into a dell betwixt two wooded hills,
Where ran a river made of many rills.
Near where to this the little alley stream
Lapsed in a turmoil, stood as in a dream
A lone, small mill-house in the vale aloof
With orange mosses on a grey slate roof
And all the walls and every lintel stone
With water mosses cunningly o'ergrown.
Its four-paned windows looked across a pool
By shadow of the house and trees kept cool;
Pent by the mossy weir that served the mill,
Its little waters lay unmoved and still,
Save for a circular, slow, eddy-wheeling
That on its bubble-spotted breast kept stealing
And now and then the sudden, short windsway
Of some elm branch or beachen, that all day
Trailed in the shadowed pool; but far below
The enfranchised waters, in tumultuous flow,
Splashed round the boulders and leapt on in foam
Adown the sunshine way that led them home.
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