Come hither, Care, and look on this fair place,
But leave your gossip and your puckered face
Beyond that flowering carrot in the glow,
Where the red poppies in the orchard blow,
And come with gentle feet; the last thing there
Was a white butterfly upon the air,
And even now a thrush was in the grass,
To feel the sovereign water slowly pass.
This pool is quiet as oblivion,
Hidden securely from the flooding sun;
Its crystal placid surface here receives
The wan grey under light of the willow leaves;
And shy things brood about the grass unheard;
Only in sunny distance sings the bird.
O Time long dead, O days reclaimed and done,
Thou broughtest joy and tears to every one,
And here by this deep pool thou wast not slow,
To deal a maiden all her tender woe;
Be kindlier to her now that she is dead,
Let her charmed spirit visit this well-head
More often, for at eve in honey-time,
Drifting in silence from her ghostly clime,
She haunts the pool about the willows pale:
Be gentle, for my feeling art may fail,
I’ll freshen sorrow and retell her tale.
She was a fragile daughter of the earth,
And touched with faery from her fatal birth;
For many summers she was hardly shy,
Not clouded with her hovering destiny,
But only wild as any woodland thing,
That comes at even to a trodden spring;
And scarce she seemed of any settled mood,
That lights the peaceful hills of maidenhood,
But shifted strangely on the whimsy air,
Not quiet nor contented anywhere.
She gathered sunshine in an earthen cruse,
And thought to keep it for her own sweet use;
Or fluttered flowers from her window high,
And wept upon them when they would not fly;
And when she found the brownish mignonette
Had blossomed where a little seed was set,
She planted her rag playmate in the sun,
Because she wanted yet another one;
And when she heard the enraptured sparrow sing,
She clamoured for a song from everything.
For many years she was as strange and free,
As a pine linnet in a cedar tree.
Her folk thought: She is very wild and odd,
But she is good, we’ll wait and trust in God.
O love, that watched the weird and charméd child,
Change from her airy fancies sweet and mild,
Like a blue brook that clears a meadow spring,
And threads the barley where the bobolinks sing,
Then wimples by the roots of dusky firs,
And gathers darkness in those deeps of hers,
Then makes an arrowy movement through a pass,
Where rocks are crannied with the clinging grass,
Then falls, almost dissolved in silver rain,
She gathers deeply to a pool again;
But something wild in her new spirit lies,
She never can regain her limpid eyes:
O love, alas! ’twas ever so to be,
When streams set out to reach the bitter sea.
It was a time within the early spring,
Before the orchards had done blossoming,
Before the kinglet on his northern search,
Had ceased his timorous piping in the birch,
When streams were bright before the coming leaves
And gurgled like the swallows in the eaves,
She wandered led by fancy to this place,
And looked upon the water’s crystal face;
She saw — what thing of beauty or of awe
I know not, no one knoweth what she saw.
But ever after she was constant here,
As silent as her shadow in the mere,
Sitting upon a stone which many feet
Had grooved and trodden for the water sweet,
And leaning gravely on her slanted arm,
Her fingers buried in the gravel warm,
She gazed and gazed and did not speak or sigh,
As if this gazing was her destiny.
They led her nightly from the magic pool,
Before the shadows grew too deep and cool;
They thought to win her from the liquid spell,
And tried to tease the elfin maid to tell,
What was the charm that led her to the spring;
But all their words availed not anything.
Then gazed they on the surface of the pool
To read the reason of such subtle rule;
Their eyes were overclouded, they could see
(Who had drawn water there perpetually)
Nothing but water in a depth serene,
With a few moony stones of palish green.
They thought perchance it was her face she saw
And answered, beauty unto beauty’s law,
But when they showed her image in a glass,
She was not cured and nothing came to pass;
So then they left her to her own strange will,
And here she stayed when the fair pool was still.
But when the wind would hurl the heavy rain,
She peered out sadly from her window-pane;
And when the night set wildly close and deep,
She took her trouble down the dale of sleep:
But when the night was warm and no dew fell,
She waked and dreamed beside the starlit well.
Then came a change, each day some offering
She laid beside the clear soft flowing spring;
And there she found them at the break of morn,
And everything would take away forlorn;
Until beside the unconscious spring was laid
Each treasure held most precious by a maid.
After, she offered flowers and often set
A bowlful of the pleasant mignonette,
And starred the stones with the narcissus white,
And pansies left athinking all the night,
Then ruffled dewy dahlias, and at last,
When sundown told the summer-time had passed,
The stainéd asters; but from day to day,
Sadly she took the untouched flowers away.
With autumn and the sounding harvest flute,
She brought her timid god the heavy fruit;
But found it still and cool at early dawn,
Beaded with dew upon the crispy lawn.
At last one eve she placed an apple here,
Smooth as a topaz and as golden clear,
Scented like almonds, with a flesh like dew
And luscious-sweet as honey through and through.
She left it sadly on the sleepy lawn,
But when she came again her apple gold was gone.
Day after day for days she mutely strove,
Not to be separate from her placid love;
Perchance she thought that, breaking through the spell,
Her shadow-god, deep in the tranquil well,
Had taken her last gift; — no man may know;
Her fancies merged with all mute things that go
The poppied path, dreams and desires foredone,
The unplucked roses of oblivion.
But now she searched for words that would express
Something of all her spirit’s loneliness;
And formed a liquid jargon, full of falls
As weird and wild as ariel madrigals;
Our human tongue was far too harsh for this,
Or her slight spirit bore too great a bliss;
But always grew she very faint and pale,
Day after day her beauty grew more frail,
More mute, more eerie, more ethereal;
Her soul burned whitely in its waning shell.
Then came the winter with his frosty breath
And made the world an image of white death,
And like to death he found the charméd child;
Yet could not kill her with his bluster wild.
Only in his first days she went about,
And sadly hearkened to his hearty shout;
From windows where the wizard frost had traced
Moth-wings of rime with silver ferns inlaced,
She saw her pool set coldly in the drift,
Where in the autumn she had left her gift,
Capped with a cloud of silver steam or smoke,
That hovered there whether she dreamed or woke;
And often stealing from her early sleep,
She watched the light cloud in the midnight deep,
Waver and blow beneath the moon’s white globe,
Shivering and whispering in her chilly robe.
At last she would not look or speak at all,
And turned her large eyes to the shaded wall.
Now she is dead, they thought; but never so,
She died not when the winter winds did blow;
She was a spirit of the summer air,
She would not vanish at the year’s despair.
At length the merry sun grew warm and high,
And changed the wildwood with his alchemy;
The violet reared her bell of drooping gold,
And over her the robin chimed and trolled.
When the first slender moon of May had come,
That finds the blithe bird busy at his home,
They missed the spirit maiden from the room,
That now was sweet with light and spring perfume,
And called her all the echoing afternoon;
She answered not, but when the growing moon
Went down the west with the last bird awing,
They found her dead beside her darling spring.
This is her tale, her murmurous monument
Flows softly where her fragile life was spent,
Not grooved in brass nor trenched in pallid stone,
But told by water to the reeds alone.
She cometh here sometimes on summer eves,
Her quiet spirit lingers in the leaves,
And while this spring flows on, and while the wands
Sway in the moonlight, while in drifting bands,
The thistledown blows gleaming in the air,
And dappled thrushes haunt the precinct fair;
She will return, she will return and lean
Above the crystal in the covert green,
And dream of beauty on the shadow flung
Of irised distance when the world was young.
Let us be gone; this is no place for tears,
Let us go slowly with the guardian years;
Let us be brave, the day is almost done,
Another setting of the pleasant sun.
Poem Analysis:
Duncan Campbell Scott’s “By the Willow Spring” is a lyrical narrative poem that combines nature, childhood imagination, love, death, and the supernatural. At its centre is the story of a strange and sensitive maiden whose mysterious attachment to a spring gradually separates her from ordinary human life. Through rich natural imagery and a dreamlike atmosphere, Scott presents the spring as both a place of beauty and a symbolic boundary between the human world and the world of mystery.
One of the poem’s most striking features is its personification of nature. The willow, spring, flowers, birds, seasons, and changing light are not merely decorative elements; they participate in the maiden’s emotional experience. The spring is described as “quiet as oblivion,” while the surrounding landscape is peaceful, secluded, and almost enchanted. Nature therefore becomes a reflection of the girl’s inner world. As she grows increasingly detached from society, she becomes more closely identified with the natural environment.
The maiden herself is presented as a fairy-like and imaginative figure. From childhood she is described as “wild and free,” possessing a sensitivity that makes her different from ordinary people. Her unusual behaviour—trying to preserve sunshine, making flowers fly, and demanding songs from everything—shows a mind governed by imagination rather than conventional reason. Scott’s description of her as “touched with faery” establishes the supernatural quality that surrounds her from the beginning.
The spring is the poem’s central symbol. When the girl first sees something mysterious in its waters, her relationship with the spring becomes obsessive. She returns to it repeatedly and eventually begins leaving offerings: flowers, fruit, and finally a beautiful golden apple. The disappearance of the apple deepens the mystery, suggesting that the spring possesses a supernatural presence or “shadow-god.” Yet Scott deliberately refuses to explain exactly what she sees. The uncertainty is important because it preserves the poem’s atmosphere of wonder and ambiguity.
The poem also explores the painful relationship between imagination and isolation. The maiden’s extraordinary imaginative life initially appears beautiful, but it gradually becomes a source of loneliness. She can no longer communicate her experience through ordinary human language. Her “liquid jargon” suggests that she has moved psychologically and spiritually beyond the limits of ordinary speech. As her connection with the spring intensifies, she becomes increasingly pale, silent, and ethereal.
The changing seasons reinforce this movement toward death. Spring and summer represent youth, beauty, and spiritual vitality, while winter resembles death and physical decline. Yet the poem refuses to make winter the final stage of the maiden’s existence. She dies beside the spring when spring returns, suggesting that her true identity belongs to the natural and supernatural world rather than to ordinary human time. Her death is therefore presented less as an absolute ending than as a transformation.
Water is particularly important to the poem’s symbolism. The spring becomes a kind of living monument to the maiden: “This is her tale, her murmurous monument / Flows softly where her fragile life was spent.” Unlike a stone monument, the spring is constantly moving. Her memory survives not through human memorials but through nature itself. The flowing water keeps her story alive and allows her spirit to return.
Finally, the poem’s conclusion combines grief with acceptance. The speaker imagines the maiden returning to the spring on summer evenings, suggesting that beauty and memory survive death. Yet the final instruction—“Let us be gone”—turns the poem away from excessive mourning. The speaker accepts the passage of time and the inevitability of death: “Let us go slowly with the guardian years.” The ending is therefore elegiac but restrained.
“By the Willow Spring” is a poem about the mysterious connection between the human imagination and the natural world. The maiden’s death is tragic, but Scott transforms her tragedy into something enduring through the spring, the willow, the flowers, and the recurring seasons. The poem’s lasting effect comes from its refusal to explain everything. The spring remains mysterious, and the maiden remains partly unknowable—just as beauty, imagination, and death themselves remain beyond complete human understanding.
