The Old Stone Basin.
Susan Coolidge.
In the heart of the busy city,
In the scorching noontide heat,
A sound of bubbling water
Falls on the din of the street.
It falls in a gray stone basin,
And over the cool wet brink
The heads of thirsty horses
Each moment are stretched to drink.
And peeping between the crowding heads
As the horses come and go,
“The Gift of Three Little Sisters”
Is read on the stone below.
Ah, beasts are not taught letters,
They know no alphabet;
And never a horse in all these years
Has read the words; and yet
I think that each toil-worn creature
Who stops to drink by the way,
His thanks in his own dumb fashion
To the sisters small must pay.
Years have gone by since busy hands
Wrought at the basin’s stone;
The kindly little sisters
Are all to women grown.
I do not know their home or fates,
Or the name they bear to men,
But this sweetness of their gracious deed
Is just as fresh as then.
And all life long, and after life,
They must the happier be,
For the cup of water given by them
When they were children three.