From “The Brook: an Idyl”
I COME from haunts of coot and hern:
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip’s farm I flow
To join...
When that my mood is sad, and in the noise
And bustle of the crowd I feel rebuke,
I turn my footsteps from its hollow joys
And sit me down beside this little brook;
The waters have a music to mine ear
It glads me much to hear.
It is a quiet glen, as you may see,
Shut in from all intrusion by the trees,
That spread...
Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:
No where by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
But here will sigh thine alder tree,
And here thine aspen shiver;...
At noon, within the dusty town,
Where the wild river rushes down,
And thunders hoarsely all day long,
I think of thee, my hermit stream,
Low singing in thy summer dream
Thine idle, sweet, old, tranquil song.
Northward, Katahdin’s chasmed pile
Looms through thy low, long, leafy aisle;
Eastward, Olamon’s summit shines;...
Clear and cool, clear and cool,
By laughing shallow and dreaming pool;
Cool and clear, cool and clear,
By shining shingle and foaming weir;
Under the crag where the ouzel sings,
And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings,
Undefiled for the undefiled;
Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child!
Dank and foul, dank and foul,...
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes;
Flow gently, I ’ll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary ’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds through the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear;...
OVER the Snows 1
Buoyantly goes
The lumberers’ bark canoe:
Lightly they sweep,
Wilder each leap,
Rending the white-caps through.
Away! Away!
With the speed of a startled deer,
While the steersman true
And his laughing crew
Sing of their wild career:
“Mariners glide...
From the German by James Clarence Mangan
RIVER! my river in the young sunshine!
Oh, clasp afresh in thine embrace
This longing, burning frame of mine,
And kiss my breast, and kiss my face!
So—there!—Ha, ha!—already in thine arms!
I feel thy love—I shout—I shiver;
But thou outlaughest loud a flouting song, proud river,...
’t Was morn, and beautiful the mountain’s brow—
Hung with the clusters of the bending vine—
Shone in the early light, when on the Rhine
We sailed and heard the waters round the prow
In murmurs parting; varying as we go,
Rocks after rocks come forward and retire,
As some gray convent wall or sunlit spire
Starts up along the banks,...
From “Sohrab and Rustum”
BUT the majestic river floated on,
Out of the mist and hum of that low land,
Into the frosty starlight, and there moved,
Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmian waste,
Under the solitary moon;—he flowed
Right for the polar star, past Orgunjè,
Brimming, and bright, and large; then sands begin
To hem his...
