Flowers of the Night :: :: University of Virginia Library

You are singing, always singing,
As I heard you long ago,
You are ringing, always ringing
On that note that well I know;
And I lie awake and hearken
In my chamber overhead,
Where the shadows crowd and darken
As I weary on my bed.

I have met you on the mountain
At the moment of your birth,
When you rose from some deep fountain
In the hidden heart of earth,

And with many a youthful sally
Made the ancient hills rejoice,
Ere you gladdened all the valley
With the music of your voice.

Now I know for all your singing
That your doom awaits you here;
That each hurried leap is bringing
In the end, and it is near;
That in merry mood or troubled
You are making for the Dee,
And your life, one moment doubled,
Will be swallowed by the sea.

Still you sing, and still I hearken,
While the crowding shadows throng;
Through the chamber that they darken
Sweeps your sylvan voice, and strong;

And to me it brings releasing
From the labour and the strife
Of the weary work of piecing
This dark puzzle of our life.

You have turned some stubborn angles
With the magic of your song,
You have seemed to loose the tangles
From the ravelled skein of wrong;
As when tost upon the boundless
Some deep harmony divine
Will sound for us the soundless
With immeasurable line.

Through my brain your song is ringing,
I am nothing but an ear;
All my soul is in your singing,
Be it dark, I still can hear;

Let me share with you, glad river,
In the blindness of your trust,
In the Taker as the Giver,—
In the just or the unjust!