The Triangular Society :: :: University of Virginia Library

Through the verdurous valleys of Derbyshire
Flows the pretty Derwent river,
Quiet and serious, slow and clear,
While hazel and beech-sprays, drooping near,
To its music dance and quiver;

Through bosky shadows and banks of moss,
Lazily, softly slipping;
So narrow its channel that one may toss
With little effort, a pebble across,
And see where it ceases skipping.

Steep hills rise sharply on either hand,
And nestling in greenest hollows
Clusters of small stone houses stand,
Half-burrow, half-nest, like the quaintly-planned
Homes of the queer bank-swallows.

So old, no doubt they were occupied
In the times of torch and martyr;
They seem grown into the slope's steep side,—
And terraces, narrow and walled, divide
The town into definite strata.

I doubt if the folk in the upper row
Are better than those below it;
But if stronger reason for high and low
Ever existed, surely no
History lives to show it.

Beneath, with a look of calm content
And a slow and slumberous motion,
The quiet tide of the fair Derwent
Rolls on, to join with the broader Trent,
In its search for the German ocean.

Looking down from my ivied nest,
In the misty autumn weather,
I watched two ducks on the river's breast,
Side by side in their peaceful quest
Sailing for days together.

Their lives so happy and innocent,
Into the past have drifted;
They have been and are gone—but where Derwent
Lazily eddies in cool content,
The secret is still unsifted.

They were white and fair as the snow's first flake,
And their necks were smooth and supple;
(I call them ducks for convenience's sake,
But one was a duck, and one a drake,
And the two were a pretty couple.)

When oft at night through the shadows brown,
Of autumn's mild forewarning,
I looked from my lofty window down
On the mossy roofs of the sleepy town,
And bade them adieu till morning—

I saw them dimly, two shapes of snow,
On the darkness of the waters,
Sailing sociably to and fro,
As loth to paddle ashore and go
Home to their sleeping quarters.

And when, as soon as the daylight came,
I looked for them down the river,
I found them floating there all the same,
As though night were nothing, and time a name,
And they had been there forever.

(In this dull town, which is sure to be
Rainy, foggy or muddy
For two whole days out of every three,—
There 's really so very little to see
That these two lovers became to me
A most absorbing study.)

At last on a morning chill and gray,
One feathery sailor only
Breasted the waves at break of day,
Floating about in an aimless way,
Silent, distraught and lonely.

And day after day went by, until
A week had dawned and departed,
But the lost one came not, and sorrowing still
The widower followed his waning will,
Languid and heavy-hearted.

But one fair morning no eye descried
The wanderer unattended;
No white neck parted the limpid tide;
No fond hearts floated there, side by side—
The idyl was done and ended!

On half my story—perhaps two-thirds—
Do doubt and mystery hover,
Since what became of those two fond birds
I cannot put into fitting words,
For I never could discover.

Did they die, I wonder and ask in vain,
In the under world or the upper?
Did they dive, and fail to come up again?
Did they sicken and perish, or were they slain
For somebody's Sunday supper?

I never shall know how their lives were rent
And their true hearts reft and broken
After their summer of calm content—
The doom of the ducks on the dim Derwent
Must always remain unspoken!