“Dig up, dig up your daughter’s bones
That sleep on Highgate hill,
And tell me if the sapphire stones
Enrich her fingers still.

“Drag up, drag up your little boy’s head
That in the grave lies down;
Say does his brow, these five years dead,
Preserve his golden crown?”

Thus spoke the witch to the madwoman,
Who, mournful as an owl,
Wondered to see Aldebaran
Shine through the witch’s cowl.

In strong enchantment she uprose
Made docile by a spell,
To dig the earth till it disclose
The bottom of its well.

And all the while she wept, because
Tears were this woman’s words,
Until her stained and wounded claws
Scratched on the coffin-boards.

She wept prefiguring a face
No longer beautiful,
But fretted into paper-lace
About a brittle skull.

She wept imagining a hand
No more a living thing,
But frayed into a ravelled band
Around a silver ring.

She cried on Mary, mother and saint…
For in the grave were laid
Two dolls immaculate with paint
And glossy with brocade.

On one a tinsel crown there was
Shaped into seven points,
The other wore rings of azure glass
To fit her finger-joints.

The execrations of the witch
Flew whistling over the farms;
The woman crouched beside the ditch
With her children in her arms.