Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The moon is hid to-night behind dark masses
Of gathered clouds, heavy with coming rain:
Drear is the wind—each fitful gust that passes
Moans as it were in pain.

Is it in pain? Those shades of grief or gladness
Are the outgoing of the heart within:
Man's spirit builds up Nature, and his sadness
Must needs be woven in.

She only weeps when human hearts are weeping,
She only smiles when human eyes are bright,
She must lie dead when man, her life, is sleeping,—
As now in the dark night—

So dark—I cannot see the river-meadows,
Save at those moments when the drifting clouds
Leave the moon bare, and white, amid dark shadows,
Glimmer the dead earth's shrouds.

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Till once again the vault of Heaven closes,
And those pale burial-clothes are no more seen:
Wrapt in so deep a darkness she reposes,
She needs no other screen.

I cannot see the rushes by the river,
As in the cold night-wind they bend and wave,
But I can hear them—how they moan and shiver,
Like grasses on a grave.

I cannot see the eager eddying tide
Sweep 'neath the arches of the old grey bridge,
But I can hear its murmuring waters glide,
Kissing each wave-worn ledge.

Dear river, pause a moment in thy going,
Thy ceaseless downward going—pause and stay;
Yet do not pause—for art thou not thy flowing?
Flow on then, flow away.

For ever flowing, thou art ever near me;
Each drop sweeps onward—thou art still beneath;
I will bend over then, and thou shalt hear me,
While all around is death,—

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Death and great stillness—only we are living,
I am awake to be awake with thee;
So, for my love a like requital giving,
Hearken awhile to me.

For well I love thee—well, how well thou knowest—
Have I not been with thee, and traced thy course,
Even where first a little brook thou flowest,
Down from thy woodland source,

Till other streams, that each has its pretence
To bear thy name, their tribute-waters bring,
And hush for aye their babbling vehemence
In thy deep murmuring.

And then broad barges float upon thy breast,
And old brown hamlets on thy brink arise,
And, mirrored in thy wave, grey church-towers rest
Against the blue, deep skies.

I know the meadows where tall Kempsford's tower
Woos thee to linger near it for a while
In slow meanderings—I know its power
To tempt and to beguile.

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And I know Lechlade's spire, and Highworth's ridge,
And I have floated with thee where thy tide
Sweeps in swift eddies under Radcot Bridge,
And followed thee, my guide,

Where distant Bampton Steeple rises high,
The only object that the eye can gain,
To break the desolate monotony
Of that dim northward plain.

While southward here and there a homestead stands,
Its blue smoke curling up from some far hill,
Whose slopes sink down to these low meadow-lands,
That are for ever still,

Save when the ringing of the whetted scythe
Startles the silence of their solitudes:
And thou hast borne me past lone Bablockhythe,—
Past the sweet Wytham woods,

Into that valley in whose bosom sleep
Grey tower, and mouldering wall, and climbing spire,
And court and grove and cloister nestling deep,—
While lingering with desire,

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Or hushed in reverence thy waters move
Softly and noiselessly—so sweet the spell
Of peace and beauty and unuttered love—
How sweet my heart knows well.

And all thy after-course—do I not know
Each bridge whose gray piers stem thine eddying current,
Each weir through which thy pent-up waters flow
A broken foaming torrent.

Each humble hamlet church—each red-roofed town—
Each little inn nestling in quiet shade—
Each old ancestral mansion looking down
Through lawn and wooded glade.

I know them well, and well each upland fallow
With its slow slope, and well each wooded steep,
Each shoaly bank whereon thy stream runs shallow,
Each pool where it is deep.

I know the month when thy green meads are golden
With cowslips or marsh-mallows—when thy dells
Are spreading their blue carpets unbeholden—
Blue carpets of blue-bells.

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I know the season when thy hanging woods
Are glorious with rich autumnal hues,
Set 'mid dark pines that know no changing moods,
Whose leaf no season strews.

For there's a time too when those woods are bare,
And brown, and bleak, and thy stream runs below
Swollen and dark, or darker from the glare
Of newly fallen snow,

That finds a home upon the neighbouring fields,
And just begins to make the brown woods white,
But settling on thy bosom only yields
A drop to swell its might.

Yet even at that season when thou art
So deep, and dark, and pitiless, and strong,
Thou hast a beauty that can reach my heart,
And make it yearn and long,—

Long with a vast unutterable longing
For a dim something far and unattained,
A something that my thought is ever wronging,
Thinking it may be gained.

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Yet did it not, where were this endless striving—
This reaching on which is life's only light—
This journeying where there is no arriving—
The fierceness of this fight

That never ends in victory or quiet—
Its victory is its own continuing—
Its being without end—no haven nigh it,
Where it may fold its wing.

Peace—peace—I am abroad and far away,
Yet in my farness thou art near to me;
All that is in me—all I cannot say—
Finds utterance in thee.

Thou and this night and this cold moaning wind,
And all this darkness and weird loneliness,
Are the reflection of mine inmost mind,
And are it and express

Its pantings and dumb yearnings—Woe is me!
My poor weak words are baffled and sink back—
Thought hides from them in light they cannot see,
Through paths they cannot track.

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So they shall tell of other simpler things
With calmer, tenderer utterance, and crave
A humble boon, and in its murmurings
Hear thine assenting wave.

There is a spot a hundred miles from here,—
Stay—I will whisper where, and thou shalt know
Which is thy dearest nook, where all are dear,—
A little space below

Thy downward stream first meets the rising tide,
The salt sea's messenger, whom twice each day
She bids flow up and bear thee to her side,
And chide thy long delay.

There dwells one there who loves thee even as I,
And often wanders by thy bank, and knows
Each bough that shades thee from the summer sky,
Each flower that near thee grows.

She has drunk in thy beauty; she has lent
In sweet humility a listening ear
To thy pure language, fondly eloquent
To those whose hearts can hear.

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Thy spirit is in her and has become
A portion of her being, as of mine,
Through thee we commune when our lips are dumb,
Through thee we intertwine

Our lives in one embrace! Ah River blest!
Thy tranquil charms were ever strong to stir
My heart to love thee, but I love thee best
That thou art dear to her;—

And oh! to whom but thee, descending River,
Shall I commit the message of my heart?
To her I dare not—for my voice would quiver,
And sudden mists would start

To eyes long tearless: and the words would fail
That rise from depths of feelings too intense
For light of speech, and nought would tell my tale
But the mute eloquence

Of dim tear-clouded eyes that cannot weep:
But I can speak to thee, and thou canst hear,
And stay thy waters gliding half-asleep
Far hence, if she be near,—

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And with soft lispings tell my message sweet,
Kissing the shore she treads on: ah, how blest
So to be near her, kneeling at her feet
With a whole love confest;

Yet is my heart half fearful to entrust
To thee its secret, for it might be so
That, as I spoke, some wild and wandering gust
Might hear, though soft and low

The words were whispered, and so hearing fly
Into the dark void of the midnight air
With mocking laughter, or sad shivering sigh,
Or moaning of despair.

Thyself shalt be my message downward flowing
In thy calm loveliness—thy glassy tide—
Thy meadows green—the shady alders growing,
The willows by thy side:

And the sweet scent on steamy, summer eves
Of new mown hay, blent with the faint fresh smell
Of broken water, where the blade upheaves,
Or foamy wavelets swell:

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The roar of distant weirs, the lazy plash
Of oars plied languidly on current strong,
The gentle rippling murmur from the wash
Of boats that speed along:

Thy little islets, and the heavenly glow
On unmown grass, and hanging foliage shed
Divinely sweet what time the sun is low
With dark clouds overhead:

All these shall be as words from me to her,
Richer with meaning than my truest words,—
For if they mould her being, if they stir
Her deepest strongest chords,

Filling her heart with pure tranquillity,
With silent yearning and unending love,
Waking in her the thoughts they wake in me,
Lifting her eyes above,

As they have pointed mine—what force of speech
Could be a bond so potent as thou art
To wed us soul to soul, link each to each
In harmony of heart?

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Dear River, then, flow downwards—haste below;
My love dwells there, why linger here above?
Flow on my tender message, sweetly flow
My message to my love.