The Vision of the Fountain

At fifteen, I became a resident in a country village, more than a hundred
miles from home. The morning after my arrival--a September morning, but
warm and bright as any in July--I rambled into a wood of oaks, with a few
walnut-trees intermixed, forming the closest shade above my head. The
ground was rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes and clumps of young
saplings, and traversed only by cattle-paths. The track, which I chanced
to follow, led me to a crystal spring, with a border of grass, as freshly
green as on May morning, and overshadowed by the limb of a great oak.
One solitary sunbeam found its way down, and played like a goldfish in
the water.

From my childhood, I have loved to gaze into a spring. The water filled
a circular basin, small but deep, and set round with stones, some of
which were covered with slimy moss, the others naked, and of variegated
hue, reddish, white, and brown. The bottom was covered with coarse sand,
which sparkled in the lonely sunbeam, and seemed to illuminate the spring
with an unborrowed light. In one spot, the gush of the water violently
agitated the sand, but without obscuring the fountain, or breaking the
glassiness of its surface. It appeared as if some living creature were
about to emerge--the Naiad of the spring, perhaps--in the shape of a
beautiful young woman, with a gown of filmy water-moss, a belt of
rainbow-drops, and a cold, pure, passionless countenance. How would the
beholder shiver, pleasantly, yet fearfully, to see her sitting on one of
the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples, and throwing up
water, to sparkle in the sun! Wherever she laid her hands on grass and
flowers, they would immediately be moist, as with morning dew. Then
would she set about her labors, like a careful housewife, to clear the
fountain of withered leaves, and bits of slimy wood, and old acorns from
the oaks above, and grains of corn left by cattle in drinking, till the
bright sand, in the bright water, were like a treasury of diamonds. But,
should the intruder approach too near, he would find only the drops of a
summer shower glistening about the spot where he had seen her.

Reclining on the border of grass, where the dewy goddess should have
been, I bent forward, and a pair of eyes met mine within the watery
mirror. They were the reflection of my own. I looked again, and lo!
another face, deeper in the fountain than my own image, more distinct in
all the features, yet faint as thought. The vision had the aspect of a
fair young girl, with locks of paly gold. A mirthful expression laughed
in the eyes and dimpled over the whole shadowy countenance, till it
seemed just what a fountain would be, if, while dancing merrily into the
sunshine, it should assume the shape of woman.