By Severn Sea and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

THE MICROCOSM

Dark against the sky
Rises the mountain wall,
But bright, how bright
In the summer light
Dashed into white with fall on fall
The streamlet hurries by!

And here will I lay me down,
Little stream, for a while by thee,
Thou one among many, unnoticed, unknown,
Of all save yon wandering bee,
Or these flies whose world is this pool of thine,
Wherein to live and to love, to rejoice and repine.

Yes! here will I lay me down
By this pool and this fall of thine,
And watch the droplets gather and glitter and slip
From the pendent mosses that fringe the edge
Of thy tiny channel, or tip
Some infinitesimal ledge.

Since not Niagara's self
Is more wondrous one whit than this,
Though it swoop a sea from a continent shelf
To plunge in an ocean abyss:

For these delicate spikes of flowers,
And tremulous bents of grass,
Are waved by the self-same breeze
That sways the giant trees,
Or sweeps the Alpine pass,
Or buffets the soaring pride of sky-built city towers:
And each fairy filament,
And feathery frond of fern,
Is strung of no other element
Than builds yon mountain chain,
Or moons that wax and wane,
Or suns and stars that burn:

And were this to stay in its course,
Or these waters turn back their way,
The sun would stop and the moon would stay,
And the stars that are whirled by the self-same force
Through the cycles of months and of years, of night and of day.

Ay, wondrous indeed art thou,
But how more wonderful I,
For thou wilt flow as thou flowest now,
And wear the hills till they sink and are low,
And through changes endure for ever and on,
For thy force and thy stuff will never be gone,
But I shall shortly die!