Lo! then the stream neglected
Forsook its wonted way:
In stagnant pools, dark-tainted,
Its wandering waters lay.

There choked by moorland ridges,
Black with the growth of peat,
Beneath the quaking surface
The fetid floods would meet;
Till rising, spreading ever
Above the chalice green
Of that fair Well, they covered
The place where it had been.
Then, near the careless convent,
Within the hill's deep shade,
The Fate which works in silence
A lake had slowly made.
As evil knows not halting
When passions strongly flow,
So daily deeper, deeper
Would those dark waters grow;
Till on an awful midnight,
When red the windows flamed
And song and jest and revel
The Vesper hour had shamed,
And wanton sin dishonoured
The time Christ's birth had crowned,
They burst their banks in darkness,
And with their raging sound
The rocks of all the valley