Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Gentle Stream, that from the mountains
Here invokest many a rill,
While two lakes thy channel fill,
Lading from their own sweet fountains
Waters which for thee they hoard,
In softly throbbing pulses poured!

506

Gentle Stream! I mourn for thee,
And the pleasant liberty
Guiding once thy twinkling feet
Down the vale in measures fleet
And mazy circuits; all is o'er,
Thou must wander forth no more,
Compassing the meadow-lands
With silver links and watery bands,
Quickening noonday's loitering breeze
Languid grown mid sweetnesses
Of drowsy flowers, or by the trees
In the solid summer shade
A silent captive haply made.
All is o'er; thy various strain
Never shall be heard again,
Mimicking old ocean's shock
Against some puny cape of rock,
Chanting here from side to side,
There by lisping boughs supplied
With a tremulous response
When thou dost thy waves ensconce
In pools unruffled, deep and still,
Where thou hast gnawed into the hill
Hollow chambers mouldering ever
With soft splash into the river,
Unless the damp their sides emboss
With green ligaments of moss.

All is o'er; a channel rude
Straight among the rocks they hewed,
Walls along the banks they led,
And, by trenching deep thy bed,
Bade the hurrying stream absorb
Peaceful bays where many an orb

507

Of silent star was sweetly glassed
In the moonless midnights passed.
And with expectation vain
Couched upon yon marshy plain,
Oft the valley's ear hath grieved,
Of her music thus bereaved,
And the interchange once brought her
Of broken fall and sleeping water.

Now along the banks I roam,
Soon to leave my mountain-home,
And the melancholy thought
Hath an inward shadow wrought,
From beneath whose covert, hills,
Wintry woods, and frothy rills,
And the lake-like meads, appear
To my spirit doubly dear,
And doubly beautiful; arrayed
In a vivid light and shade
So strangely palpable, one might
Deem the old habitual light
A visionary landscape worn
By the true hills, a mask now torn
From the jealous face of things
By the strength of sorrow. Springs
Of a tender sadness, shy
Of all outward sympathy,
Have the truthful gaze renewed,
And the keenness of the mood,
Wherewith I, a stranger, first
In these natural pageants nursed
Inwardly the dubious strife,
Whence chance and purpose drew the life
Of poetry:—and from the skies
And mountains, or my mental eyes,

508

Scales seem to fall, and wondrous light
Dawns, like day, while to my sight
Are, like a revelation, given
A sweeter Earth, a plainer Heaven!

By this empty bed I mourn,
Where the stream was wont to turn
With a blither, louder strain
Further o'er the rushy plain
Its tripping waters; and I hear
A voice to warn, a voice to cheer,
Like a double echo, sigh
Up the channel green and dry.
Still within this meadow-reach
Thou hast gentle lore to teach,
Studious River! nor art thou
Mute in thy dishonour now.
But thou hast a parting word
Which my soul doth well to hoard,
As a monitory token
Of a love so long unbroken,
A serious earnest of that tie
Of poetic amity,
Which hath been twixt thee and me.

Preach on, sweet Rothay! while I listen,
And behold thy waters glisten
With a sentient purpose filled,
And the birch-trees banners stilled
By the slumbrous frost! I hear
The spirit of the river near,
In the sliding shallow singing,
Hark! what farewell she is bringing!
Sorrow-laden I translate
Her meek wisdom with a weight

509

Of solemn language that is brought
Rather from my inward thought,
More abstruse than may beseem
The lessons of a mountain stream,
But self-disturbance hath the skill
To steer the words which way it will.

“By the love I have for thee,
Poet! list awhile to me.
From the woodlands and the hills
And the icy-fettered rills
Behind their masks of crystal throbbing,
While the frost is hourly robbing
All their fountains, from the lakes
And withered fern among the brakes,—
From thy favorite images
Of the white snow-laden trees,
And the summits hoar that seem
In the wind to flash and gleam,
And with silver-dusted snow
To smoke like beacons, while below
Upon the unwary shepherd's head
Arbitrary showers are shed,
Though the skies are cold and clear
And no clouds are hovering near,—
From the yew trees on the scar
Oft inflamed by moon or star
Snared within their dusky plumes,
Which the radiance half consumes,
Or transfigures, while the lights
Climb the heavens on starry nights;—
From the temple of old fir,
Where the restless stockdoves stir
Through the summer midnights, ranging
Mid the leafless boughs, and changing

510

All their perches hour by hour
In the gently rocking tower,
Like unquiet sleepers, fraught
With the poison of sad thought;—
From the ragged heron isles,
Where the slanting sunset smiles
Into the nests, and on the boughs
The creatures sit in drowsy rows,
With their plumage doubly bright,
Slumbering in the golden light,—
From the cataracts, all and each,
I bring into this meadow-reach
Farewells for thee; and be it mine
To teach thy heart by this grave sign
Of my dishonour, how to greet
Those new duties thou must meet
By far other streams than this,
In a life of toil-worn bliss,
Hallowed cares and labours pure,
And in usefulness obscure
Shepherding thy little flock
To the shadow of the Rock
Of Ages, in the desert set
As a refuge from the heat,
And a shelter from the eye
Of dark spirits prowling nigh.

Sweetly wandering from my way,
Once I paused in many a bay,
By a leaning oak half spanned,
Or a drooping wych-elm fanned,
Or at noonday clouded o'er
By a nodding sycamore,

511

While the sun fell through the eaves
Of the ever-twinkling leaves,
Playing through the weedy rents
Of the underwater tents,
By cool-rooted alder trees
Pitched far down, with lattices
Where light and limpid water pour
And weary not hour after hour.
Then was I beautiful, and then
Purchased looks of love from men
And praises from the poets, glad
When gladness wrought in me, and sad
Whensoe'er of frolic weary,
I, like men, took sanctuary
In opposites:—but now, in awe
Of man, I swerve from that sweet law
Of nature, and have thereby lost
All the charms that were my boast.
This then be the warning given;—
While the single eye of Heaven
Doth the preacher train and school
With its ever-present rule,
In his mouth the harshest lore
Hath a secret winning power,
Springing oft he knows not whence,
And transcending barren sense:
But should he chance before the gaze
Of man to crouch, or, for the praise
The world would offer, to divert
The sacred stream of truth, and hurt
The pastures of the little sheep
He hath been ordained to keep,
From his preaching will depart
All that magic of the heart,

512

All the store of simple spells
Whereby faith works her miracles.

Yet from this injurious wrong
Of my poor stream may Christian song
Cheerful wisdom thus distil;—
If I do but now fulfil
Half mine office to the eye
Of the thoughtless wandering by,
To the Angel or the Saint
My disfigured type, though faint,
Doth a loftier meaning bear,
Than when men vouchsafed to spare
All my pastoral wanderings free
In their first integrity.
Well it seems to forward youth,
Thus to carry holy truth
Here and there, as it may choose
With wilful virtue, till it lose,
For every praise of man it gains,
Skill in truth's celestial strains.
Good self-sought is barely good,
And occasion too much wooed
Is no angel; but a cheat
Comes in disguise to counterfeit
Her presence, and with fatal wiles,
Self-knighted warriors thus beguiles
To fearful falls; and what is beauty
But too oft the foe of duty,
Veiling this grave truth: Self-will
Turns our very good to ill;
And virtuous purpose most of all
Needs the bridle and the thrall
Of adverse circumstance, and place
Ungenial to our special grace,

513

Lest the unthrifty sand be done
Ere yet the trial Hour is run?

Yon mighty lake's sweet-watered sea,
Minstrel! is my eternity;
And by duty narrowed now,
Straight unto that rest I flow,
Well content for such an end
The price to pay, full many a bend
Of tuneful water to forswear
And sweet delay, one only care
Being left unto me—to prepare
To mingle with the blessed peace,
And mingling with it to increase
Its blessedness, as souls perchance
The rest of other souls enhance,
Gently gathered, one by one,
After each day's battle done.
So with thee, when duty spoils
Wilful grace with Christian toils,
And confines in narrow bed
Thy young life, be comforted.
Though less lovely it may be,
The road is shorter to the sea.
If it gives through public strife
A rougher aspect to thy life,
Still the end is nearer brought,
The end for which thy life hath wrought.
Self only dies; the gasp of death
What is it, but the earliest breath
We draw on that eternal shore,
Where there is life for evermore?

Farewell! and when far off, O think
Of spots still left on Rothay's brink

514

Unchanged; where I with gurgling fall
Am laving still the sunny wall
Ivy-wimpled, and the breeze
Scatters from the road-side trees
Fragrant lime-flowers, and the feet
Of thy familiars daily meet
Between the bridges; thus, when thou
Look'st o'er meads from Elton's brow,
Where the fourteen yew trees bound
The over-peopled church-yard round,
Or from off the grassy plot
Where the dwarfish cedars spot
The river's brink, and six church towers
In winter through the leafless bowers
Look on, and mid the summer green
To thee are present, though unseen,
I at summer noons shall bring
Broken waters there to sing,
Or beneath the tall boughs shading
My thin streams, be hourly braiding
My long weedy locks of green,
In the glossy shallow seen.
Beauty, too, shall be with thee
In the silver willow tree,
In the unbroken dome of sky,
And mighty plain which can supply
A bed whereon the sun may die
In glory, and the pomps of even,
And the breadths of starry heaven.
Grassy murmurs, too, shall wander
Where the Nenna doth meander,
Freighted oft with such sweet bells,
Whose music o'er the lowland swells

515

To many a farm; thou shalt not want
A gentle river side to haunt,
For Nenna shall thy fancy bless
With her earthy silentness.

Blessed is the will subdued
Unto its lot, and fortitude
Which so refits the local ties
Once broken, and the sympathies
Dissevered, that they only brighten
What hath passed away, and lighten
Sadness of her idle dreams;
And the heart more hallowed seems,
While the years new loves unfold,
Superseding not the old;
For kind feeling hath a truth
Which outgrows not its first youth,
Feeding on its native power
Self-sustained; the present hour
Is then most blameless when recast
In the feelings of the past.
Thus, while pious hopes and fears
Fill in the blank thy life appears
All suddenly to be, and win
Without disdain a light from sin,
Caution, scarcely falling short
Of being a virtue, shall consort
With thy new habits, and beguile
Thy spirit with approving smile.
Or if altered charms be slow
On thy jealous heart to grow,
A form on Nenna's bank shall talk
With thee in many a lonely walk,
An angel presence that will seem
Brighter than poetic dream,

516

An apparition that outstrips
The vocal praise of minstrel's lips,
Even the Spiritual Beauty
Which is the Shadow cast by Duty.