A fountain had its birth here, and fell into a marble basin, which was all covered with moss and shaggy with water-weeds.

Over the gush of the small stream, with an urn in her arms, stood a marble nymph, whose nakedness the moss had kindly clothed as with a garment; and the long trails and tresses of the maidenhair had done what they could in the poor thing's behalf, by hanging themselves about her waist, In former days--it might be a remote antiquity--this lady of the fountain had first received the infant tide into her urn and poured it thence into the marble basin.
But now the sculptured urn had a great crack from top to bottom; and the discontented nymph was compelled to see the basin fill itself through a channel which she could not control, although with water long ago consecrated to her.
For this reason, or some other, she looked terribly forlorn; and you might have fancied that the whole fountain was but the overflow of her lonely tears.
"This was a place that I used greatly to delight in," remarked Donatello, sighing.

"As a child, and as a boy, I have been very happy here." "And, as a man, I should ask no fitter place to be happy in," answered Kenyon.

"But you, my friend, are of such a social nature, that I should hardly have thought these lonely haunts would take your fancy.

It is a place for a poet to dream in, and people it with the beings of his imagination." "I am no poet, that I know of," said Donatello, "but yet, as I tell you, I have been very happy here, in the company of this fountain and this nymph.