Grey Grisold Poem by Cicely Fox Smith

All on the misty mountain
In the driving rain,
There saw I Grey Grisold
Bowed under his chain.
The fairies have bound him
With his knees up to his chin,
All in the grey weather
Weeping for his sin.

He lives on the lone mountain
Sitting on a grey stone,
Where the wind pipes sadly
O'er the moorland lone.
I saw his gnarled fingers
And his bent bald crown;
I heard his tears falling,
Falling endless down.

They have fallen so long
To a stream they have grown
They have worn two furrows
In the grey stone.
Through the rocks and the heather
They go flowing down,
Where the plovers fly wailing
Over bog-lands brown.

Grey Grisold was taken
From his bags of gold,
The red gold he got
For the soul that he sold.
To a grey stone they bound him
With his knees up to his chin,
All on the high mountain
Weeping for his sin.