Teresa and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

An old mill stands at the gloomy head
Of a narrow gorge profound:
But many a generation's fled
Since millers there made flour for bread,
Or the water-wheel went round—

So long, that a sapling ash, you see,
Found leisure a march to steal,
And grew right through to a sturdy tree,
As Nature's self had, in scorn or glee,
Put a spoke in the mighty wheel.

What need? There are rents in the oaken ring,
And the worm there bores its bed;
The loud, lithe water, with splash and spring,
May leap the rock like a living thing,
But the wheel—it is hushed and dead.

And down the gully with splendid force
The rain-fed cataracts pour,
Mining the rocks without remorse,
And scooping the crags in their idle course:
For the wheel goes round no more.

The truth is as old as when earth first woke,
And as young as yesterday:
The nave may be rotten, the axle broke,
The spider may spin from spoke to spoke,
But the stream will hold its way.

Hast never read what is written here
In the lives of men? Heigh-ho!
The life-stream flows, but with empty cheer,
For the heart is broken, or out of gear:
Would God that it were not so!