The Silent Muse
``Why have you silent been so long?''
In tones of mild rebuke you ask.
Know you not, kindly friend, that Song
Is the ``Gay Science,'' not a task?
It is but when it pleaseth God
The blackthorn blows, the acorns fall;
The Muse ignores a mortal's nod,
And will not come to beck and call.
If I, to catch the ear of men,
Should go on singing day by day,
What other, better, were I then,
Than screeching chough or scolding jay?
But save the unseen source be stirred,
The happy numbers will not flow:
Then one is like a songless bird
That crouches in the drifted snow.
Say, did you ever sit and dream,
When summer clouds are white and still,
Beside a slow unsounding stream
That winds below some rustic mill?
The languid current scarcely moves;
At times you almost doubt it flows;
Loitering in shallow sandy grooves,
It makes no music as it goes.
The sluice is down, the mill-race still,
Nor in mid-stream nor water's edge
Comes faintest ripple, tiniest rill,
To stir the flag, or sway the sedge.
Beside the dozing stream you doze,
For nothing wakes in air or sky:
It feels as if Time's eyelids close,
And 'tis the same to live or die;
To be a passive part of all
That rounds Heaven's universal plan,
Of things that soar, of things that crawl,
Of mindless matter, as of man.
When slowly through the noonday sleep
A phantom something seems to stir,
Like waves of dewy light that creep
Along gray chords of gossamer.
At first it is nor sight nor sound,
But feeling only, inward sense
Of motion slowly rising round,
You know not where, you know not whence.
Then, noiseless still, but plain to see,
The languid waters wake and wind;
The wave before now fears to be
O'ertaken by the wave behind.
The race, long pent, from out the mill
Comes rushing, rippling, gleam on gleam;
The runnels rise, the shallows fill,
And deep and happy flows the stream.
The lazy sedges sway and swerve,
The reedmace rocks its heavy head;
Past many a bend, and bay, and curve,
The river revels through its bed.
And as it twists, and curls, and sweels,
From out its leaping heart there come
Sounds sweet as far-off village bells,
Or swarming bee-hive's honeyed hum.
Through quaking grass and waving weed
Rises and falls the river-theme;
Vibrating rush and trembling reed
Are but the harpstrings of the stream.
Once more the gold-ribbed gravel trills
With quavering trebles clear and cool,
Blent with the deeper note that fills
The plunging weir and swirling pool.
Bed, bank and channel, chant and chime,
And fall and freshet, as they run,
Though ignorant of tune and time,
Sing in melodious unison.
And so, if I be shaped to sing
What kindly hearts are pleased to hear,
And blissful were did Nature bring
A rush of music all the year;
Seasons there are it doth not flow,
When Fancy's freshets will not come,
The springs of song seem shrunk and low,
And all my being dry and dumb.
When suddenly from far-off source,
Unseen, unsounding, deep, immense,
Something, with swift resistless force,
Flushes the heart and floods the sense;
And as though Heaven and Earth did drain
Into that deep mysterious spring,
Brims all the windings of the brain;
Then like replenished stream I sing.
The will can not the stream control,
Its currents are divinely sent,
And thought and feeling, mind and soul,
Are rapt in rhythmic ravishment.
And on they flow, when once they start,
To some ordained but unguessed goal,
Through all the channels of the heart,
And all the reaches of the soul.
Then come the wingëd words that skim
The surface of earth's discontent
To soar up to the ether dim,
Faint heard from far-off firmament.
But, till the music stirs and swells
Within my breast, forbearing be;
Nor lightly waken slumbering bells
Above a silent sanctuary!
poem by Alfred Austin
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In The Harbour: To The Avon
Flow on, sweet river! like his verse
Who lies beneath this sculptured hearse;
Nor wait beside the churchyard wall
For him who cannot hear thy call.
Thy playmate once; I see him now
A boy with sunshine on his brow,
And hear in Stratford's quiet street
The patter of his little feet.
I see him by thy shallow edge
Wading knee-deep amid the sedge;
And lost in thought, as if thy stream
Were the swift river of a dream.
He wonders whitherward it flows;
And fain would follow where it goes,
To the wide world, that shall erelong
Be filled with his melodious song.
Flow on, fair stream! That dream is o'er;
He stands upon another shore;
A vaster river near him flows,
And still he follows where it goes.
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Adrift: A Brisbane River Reverie
An amphitheatre of purple hills
And emerald slopes where nestling villas gleam,
Flooded with golden light that crowns and fills
Height, vale, and stream.
The clouds float motionless like isles of snow
Set in the sapphire of the summer sky,
The river, like a ribbon, far below
Winds rippling by;
As, like a creeping snake, with curve and sweep
The languid current steals past mead and scar,
To the dark mangrove fringing on the deep
Abreast the bar.
Slow drifts the boat past homestead, town, and lea;
The waters laugh and sob against the side
As down the murmuring river to the sea,
Dreaming, I glide.
Past meadowy marshland and gray limestone bluff,
Low mangrove fens and waste lantana heights,
Long reaches where the tides and winds are rough,
And sheltered bights.
Now wider spread the waters to the eyes;
Now sparser grow the homesteads, scarcely seen,
Save where some roof or gaunt gray trunk may rise
Against the green.
And salter on the cheek the breezes blow;
And in a deeper key the river sings;
And from the viewless sea move to and fro
Swift snow-like wings.
These are the harbingers from voyaged seas
Who knows what seas of thought man yet may sail
As science slowly sifts Life’s mysteries—
And lifts the veil?
poem by George Essex Evans
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Perpetual Motion
What (said the poet) should we care
For all this mad world's phantasies,
For rumours rife upon the air
Of terrors looming overseas?
If so, the soul were plagued alway
With far-fetched grieving, what of mirth?
For somewhere sorror broods all day;
Yet laughter, too, inhabits earth.
For the sun shines and the grass grows,
And the ferns nod above the stream
That down this placid valley flows;
Then let us rest a while, and dream.
For the grass grows as the sun shines,
And the stream flows and sings a song
To chide the sad heart that repines
Ah, summer, summer, linger long!
What (I gave answer) badgers me
Are not the tragedies of earth.
Despite your gay philosophy
Of seeking joy and claiming mirth
For boon companions as you go,
Oft times these very joys oppress
And suns that shine and streams that flow
May be a source of weariness.
For the grass grows and the sun gleams
To sear the grass and, where they flow,
I must bring water from the streams
To make the blinking grass to grow.
And the sun gleams and the grass grows -
Indeed I know it well enough;
For as it springs where water flows
I've got to cut the blasted stuff.
poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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Songo River. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The Fourth)
Nowhere such a devious stream,
Save in fancy or in dream,
Winding slow through bush and brake,
Links together lake and lake.
Walled with woods or sandy shelf,
Ever doubling on itself
Flows the stream, so still and slow
That it hardly seems to flow.
Never errant knight of old,
Lost in woodland or on wold,
Such a winding path pursued
Through the sylvan solitude.
Never school-boy, in his quest
After hazel-nut or nest,
Through the forest in and out
Wandered loitering thus about.
In the mirror of its tide
Tangled thickets on each side
Hang inverted, and between
Floating cloud or sky serene.
Swift or swallow on the wing
Seems the only living thing,
Or the loon, that laughs and flies
Down to those reflected skies.
Silent stream! thy Indian name
Unfamiliar is to fame;
For thou hidest here alone,
Well content to be unknown.
But thy tranquil waters teach
Wisdom deep as human speech,
Moving without haste or noise
In unbroken equipoise.
Though thou turnest no busy mill,
And art ever calm and still,
Even thy silence seems to say
To the traveller on his way:--
'Traveller, hurrying from the heat
Of the city, stay thy feet!
Rest awhile, nor longer waste
Life with inconsiderate haste!
'Be not like a stream that brawls
Loud with shallow waterfalls,
But in quiet self-control
Link together soul and soul.'
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Journeys end
The stream meanders to and fro.
Here where the cattle come to drink
the yellow cowslips gaily grow.
The weeping willows stooping low
adorn the banks on either side.
The stream continues in its flow.
Past meadows where the cattle graze
and fields where corn is ripening
but here and there red poppies blaze.
The stream now to a river grown
now deep and wide; it gathers strength
Its purpose to itself unknown.
Past cottages which stand alone.
Small villages and market towns
and bridges built of weathered stone.
It has become a thoroughfare
which slices through the city’s heart
With rush and bustle everywhere.
The docks and quays and factories
confine the river in its course.
There is no grass there are no trees.
The river flows on turgidly
until at last it gains release
and flows into the open sea.
But in the distance still the stream
meanders gently to and fro
Where cowslips nod and lovers dream.
poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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Sweet Afton
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forebear,
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair.
How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills,
Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills,
There daily I wander as noon rises high
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.
How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow;
There oft as mild Ev'ning weeps over the lea
The sweet scented birk shades my Mary and me.
Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides,
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
As gathering sweet flow'rets she stems thy clear wave.
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays,
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
song performed by by Nickel Creek
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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In Summer Time
When summer time has come, and all
The world is in the magic thrall
Of perfumed airs that lull each sense
To fits of drowsy indolence;
When skies are deepest blue above,
And flow'rs aflush,--then most I love
To start, while early dews are damp,
And wend my way in woodland tramp
Where forests rustle, tree on tree,
And sing their silent songs to me;
Where pathways meet and path ways part,--
To walk with Nature heart by heart,
Till wearied out at last I lie
Where some sweet stream steals singing by
A mossy bank; where violets vie
In color with the summer sky,--
Or take my rod and line and hook,
And wander to some darkling brook,
Where all day long the willows dream,
And idly droop to kiss the stream,
And there to loll from morn till night--
Unheeding nibble, run, or bite--
Just for the joy of being there
And drinking in the summer air,
The summer sounds, and summer sights,
That set a restless mind to rights
When grief and pain and raging doubt
Of men and creeds have worn it out;
The birds' song and the water's drone,
The humming bees' low monotone,
The murmur of the passing breeze,
And all the sounds akin to these,
That make a man in summer time
Feel only fit for rest and rhyme.
Joy springs all radiant in my breast;
Though pauper poor, than king more blest,
The tide beats in my soul so strong
That happiness breaks forth in song,
And rings aloud the welkin blue
With all the songs I ever knew.
O time of rapture! time of song!
How swiftly glide thy days along
Adown the current of the years,
Above the rocks of grief and tears!
'Tis wealth enough of joy for me
In summer time to simply be.
poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
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The Hudson
AFTER A LECTURE AT ALBANY
'T WAS a vision of childhood that came with its dawn,
Ere the curtain that covered life's day-star was drawn;
The nurse told the tale when the shadows grew long,
And the mother's soft lullaby breathed it in song.
'There flows a fair stream by the hills of the West,'--
She sang to her boy as he lay on her breast;
'Along its smooth margin thy fathers have played;
Beside its deep waters their ashes are laid.'
I wandered afar from the land of my birth,
I saw the old rivers, renowned upon earth,
But fancy still painted that wide-flowing stream
With the many-hued pencil of infancy's dream.
I saw the green banks of the castle-crowned Rhine,
Where the grapes drink the moonlight and change it to wine;
I stood by the Avon, whose waves as they glide
Still whisper his glory who sleeps at their side.
But my heart would still yearn for the sound of the waves
That sing as they flow by my forefathers' graves;
If manhood yet honors my cheek with a tear,
I care not who sees it,--no blush for it here!
Farewell to the deep-bosomed stream of the West!
I fling this loose blossom to float on its breast;
Nor let the dear love of its children grow cold,
Till the channel is dry where its waters have rolled!
poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Afton Water
1 Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
2 Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise;
3 My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
4 Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
5 Thou stock-dove, whose echo resounds thro' the glen,
6 Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
7 Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear,
8 I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair.
9 How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,
10 Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills;
11 There daily I wander as noon rises high,
12 My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.
13 How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
14 Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow;
15 There oft, as mild Ev'ning sweeps over the lea,
16 The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.
17 Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
18 And winds by the cot where my Mary resides,
19 How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
20 As gathering sweet flowrets she stems thy clear wave.
21 Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
22 Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays;
23 My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
24 Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream
poem by Robert Burns
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Sweet Afton
'Flow gently, sweet Afton! amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
Thou stockdove whose echo resounds thro' the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing thy screaming forbear,
I charge you, disturb not my slumbering Fair.
How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,
Far mark'd with the courses of clear, winding rills;
There daily I wander as noon rises high,
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.
How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where, wild in the woodlands, the primroses blow;
There oft, as mild Ev'ning weeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.
Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides;
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
As, gathering sweet flowerets, she stems thy clear wave.
Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
poem by Robert Burns (1791)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Future
A wanderer is man from his birth.
He was born in a ship
On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming with wonder and joy
He spreads out his arms to the light,
Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.
As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.
Whether he wakes,
Where the snowy mountainous pass,
Echoing the screams of the eagles,
Hems in its gorges the bed
Of the new-born clear-flowing stream;
Whether he first sees light
Where the river in gleaming rings
Sluggishly winds through the plain;
Whether in sound of the swallowing sea--
As is the world on the banks,
So is the mind of the man.
Vainly does each, as he glides,
Fable and dream
Of the lands which the river of Time
Had left ere he woke on its breast,
Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.
Only the tract where he sails
He wots of; only the thoughts,
Raised by the objects he passes, are his.
Who can see the green earth any more
As she was by the sources of Time?
Who imagines her fields as they lay
In the sunshine, unworn by the plough?
Who thinks as they thought,
The tribes who then roam'd on her breast,
Her vigorous, primitive sons?
What girl
Now reads in her bosom as clear
As Rebekah read, when she sate
At eve by the palm-shaded well?
Who guards in her breast
As deep, as pellucid a spring
Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure?
What bard,
At the height of his vision, can deem
Of God, of the world, of the soul,
With a plainness as near,
As flashing as Moses felt
When he lay in the night by his flock
On the starlit Arabian waste?
Can rise and obey
The beck of the Spirit like him?
This tract which the river of Time
Now flows through with us, is the plain.
Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.
Border'd by cities and hoarse
With a thousand cries is its stream.
And we on its breast, our minds
Are confused as the cries which we hear,
Changing and shot as the sights which we see.
And we say that repose has fled
For ever the course of the river of Time.
That cities will crowd to its edge
In a blacker, incessanter line;
That the din will be more on its banks,
Denser the trade on its stream,
Flatter the plain where it flows,
Fiercer the sun overhead.
That never will those on its breast
See an ennobling sight,
Drink of the feeling of quiet again.
But what was before us we know not,
And we know not what shall succeed.
Haply, the river of Time--
As it grows, as the towns on its marge
Fling their wavering lights
On a wider, statelier stream--
May acquire, if not the calm
Of its early mountainous shore,
Yet a solemn peace of its own.
And the width of the waters, the hush
Of the grey expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with foam
As it draws to the Ocean, may strike
Peace to the soul of the man on its breast--
As the pale waste widens around him,
As the banks fade dimmer away,
As the stars come out, and the night-wind
Brings up the stream
Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.
poem by Matthew Arnold
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Subterranean for M lady Deana
Cascades of crystal water flow
into the waiting pool below.
The force and power of the descent
Renders the water turbulent.
Although hemmed in by rocky walls,
the pool beneath the water falls
is never known to overflow.
I wonder where the waters go.
Far, far away a river flows.
I have been told by one who knows.
Its source is that same rocky pool
which send its waters clear and cool
By secret streams deep underground
to where an exit can be found
A pathway to the world outside
to form a river deep and wide.
Close by its brink I sit and think
as shy wild creatures come to drink.
His explanation could be true
a train of thought which I pursue.
At last I find I must accept
this rather startling new concept
Which solves for me a mystery
I need no longer wonder why.
That distant pool won’t overflow
it has some outlet down below.
Which sets the pent up waters free
to run swiftly and secretly.
Through passages unknown to men
until it can emerge again.
Into the light where it can be
a broad stream dreaming placidly.
20-Nov-07
poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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Two Rivers
Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,
Repeats the music of the rain;
But sweeter rivers pulsing flit
Through thee, as thou through the Concord Plain.
Thou in thy narrow banks art pent:
The stream I love unbounded goes
Through flood and sea and firmament;
Through light, through life, it forward flows.
I see the inundation sweet,
I hear the spending of the steam
Through years, through men, through Nature fleet,
Through love and thought, through power and dream.
Musketaquit, a goblin strong,
Of shard and flint makes jewels gay;
They lose their grief who hear his song,
And where he winds is the day of day.
So forth and brighter fares my stream,—
Who drink it shall not thirst again;
No darkness taints its equal gleam,
And ages drop in it like rain.
poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Can Streams Flow Along The River Sides?
Can the streams run upto the oceans far?
Can they run along the side of the rivers known?
You were a river and I a stream
Who flowed together once.
Using the sixth sense I read your mind
The one none could read before.
Each line written on your mind
Unveiled a portrait painted never.
You were a river and I a stream..
Aside my failing senses old
Triumphed my sixth sense young.
You, the river got flooded
And I, the stream was drowned.
Denouncing the last reason left you kept even my soul off-
An act someone else could have done.
Each word spoken at my funeral often
Unravelled the mystery of your mind.
Along the side of the river of your ego,
May I flow as a stream entwining you ever in the next life too?
poem by M.d Dinesh Nair
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The River
It is a venerable place,
An old ancestral ground,
So broad, the rainbow wholly stands
Within its lordly bound;
And here the river waits and winds
By many a wooded mound.
Upon a rise, where single oaks
And clumps of beeches tall
Drop pleasantly their shade beneath,
Half-hid amidst them all,
Stands in its quiet dignity
An ancient manor-hall.
About its many gable-ends
The swallows wheel their flight;
The huge fantastic weather-vanes
Look happy in the light;
The warm front through the foliage gleams,
A comfortable sight.
The ivied turrets seem to love
The low, protected leas;
And, though this manor-hall hath seen
The snow of centuries,
How freshly still it stands amid
Its wealth of swelling trees!
The leafy summer-time is young;
The yearling lambs are strong;
The sunlight glances merrily;
The trees are full of song;
The valley-loving river flows
Contentedly along.
Look where the merry weather-vanes
Veer upon yonder tower:
There, amid starry jessamine
And clasping passion-flower,
The sweetest Maid of all the land
Is weeping in her bower.
Alas, the lowly Youth she loves
Loves her, but fears to sue:
He came this morning hurriedly;
Then forth her blushes flew!
But he talk'd of common things, and so
Her eyes are fill'd with dew.
Time passes on; the clouds are come;
The river, late so bright,
Rolls foul and black, and gloomily
Makes known across the night,
In far-heard plash and weary drench,
The passage of its might.
The noble Bridegroom counts the hours;
The guests are coming fast;
(The vanes are creaking drearily
Within the dying blast!)
The bashful Bride is at his side;
And night is here at last.
The guests are gay; the minstrels play;
'Tis liker noon than night;
From side to side, they toast the Bride,
Who blushes ruby light:
For one and all within that hall,
It is a cheerful sight.
But unto one, who stands alone,
Among the mists without,
Watching the windows, bright with shapes
Of king and saint devout,
Strangely across the muffled air
Pierces the laughter-shout.
No sound or sight this solemn night
But moves the soul to fear:
The faded saints stare through the gloom,
Askant, and wan, and blear;
And wither'd cheeks of watchful kings
Start from their purple gear.
The burthen of the wedding-song
Comes to him like a wail;
The stream, athwart the cedar-grove,
Is shining ghastly pale:
His cloudy brow clears suddenly!
Dark soul, what does thee ail?
He turns him from the lighted hall;
The pale stream curls and heaves
And moans beyond the gloomy wood,
Through which he breaks and cleaves;
And now his footfall dies away
Upon the wither'd leaves.
The restless moon, among the clouds,
Is loitering slowly by;
Now in a circle like the ring
About a weeping eye;
Now left quite bare and bright; and now
A pallor in the sky;
And now she's looking through the mist,
Cold, lustreless, and wan,
And wildly, past her dreary form,
The watery clouds rush on,
A moment white beneath her light,
And then, like spirits, gone.
Silent and fast they hurry past,
Their swiftness striketh dread,
For earth is hush'd, and no breath sweeps
The spider's rainy thread,
And everything, but those pale clouds,
Is dark, and still, and dead.
The lonely stars are here and there,
But weak and wasting all;
The winds are dead, the cedars spread
Their branches like a pall;
The guests, by laughing twos and threes,
Have left the bridal hall.
Beneath the mossy, ivied bridge,
The river slippeth past:
The current deep is still as sleep,
And yet so very fast!
There's something in its quietness
That makes the soul aghast.
No wind is in the willow-tree
That droops above the bank;
The water passes quietly
Beneath the sedges dank;
Yet the willow trembles in the stream,
And the dry reeds talk and clank.
The weak stars swoon; the jagged moon
Is lost in the cloudy air.
No thought of light! save where the wave
Sports with a fitful glare.
The dumb and dreadful world is full
Of darkness and night-mare.
The hall-clocks clang; the watch-dog barks.
What are his dreams about?
Marsh lights leap, and tho' fast asleep
The owlets shriek and shout;
The stars, thro' chasms in utter black,
Race like a drunken rout.
‘Wake, wake, oh wake!’ the Bridegroom now
Calls to his sleeping Bride:
‘Alas, I saw thee, pale and dead,
Roll down a frightful tide!’
He takes her hand: ‘How chill thou art!
What is it, sweet my Bride?’
The Bride bethinks her now of him
Who last night was no guest.
‘Sweet Heaven! and for me? I dream!
Be calm, thou throbbing breast.’
She says, in thought, a solemn prayer
And sinks again to rest.
Along, along, swiftly and strong
The river slippeth past;
The current deep is still as sleep,
And yet so very fast!
There's something in its quietness
That makes the soul aghast.
The morn has risen: wildly by
The water glides to-day;
Outspread upon its eddying face,
Long weeds and rushes play;
And on the bank the fungus rots,
And the grass is foul'd with clay.
Time passes on: the park is bare;
The year is scant and lean;
The river's banks are desolate;
The air is chill and keen;
But, now and then, a sunny day
Comes with a thought of green.
Amid blear February's flaw,
Tremulous snowdrops peep;
The crocus, in the shrewd March morn,
Starts from its wintry sleep;
The daisies sun themselves in hosts,
Among the pasturing sheep.
The waters, in their old content,
Between fresh margins run;
The pike, as trackless as a sound,
Shoots thro' the current dun;
And languid new-born chestnut-leaves
Expand beneath the sun.
The summer's prime is come again;
The lilies bloom anew;
The current keeps the doubtful past
Deep in its bosom blue,
And babbles low thro' quiet fields
Gray with the falling dew.
The sheep-bell tolls the curfew-time;
The gnats, a busy rout,
Fleck the warm air; the distant owl
Shouteth a sleepy shout;
The voiceless bat, more felt than seen,
Is flitting round about;
The poplar's leaflet scarcely stirs;
The river seems to think;
Across the dusk, the lily broad
Looks coolly from the brink;
And knee-deep in the freshet's fall,
The meek-eyed cattle drink.
The chafers boom; the white moths rise
Like spirits from the ground;
The gray-flies sing their weary tune,
A distant, dream-like sound;
And far, far off, in the slumberous eve,
Bayeth a restless hound.
At this sweet time, the Lady walks
Beside the gentle stream;
She marks the waters curl along,
Beneath the sunset gleam,
And in her soul a sorrow moves,
Like memory of a dream.
She passes on. How still the earth,
And all the air above!
Here, where of late the scritch-owl shriek'd,
Whispers the happy dove;
And the river, through the ivied bridge,
Flows calm as household love.
poem by Coventry Patmore
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The River Forever To The Ocean Flow
The river that flows from the hills far away
Through wetlands and dry lands by night and by day
As old as father time will journey forever more
Through the flat coastal lands en route to the sea shore.
It starts on it's journey as a trickling rill
In a pond by a rock at the base of the hill
That is far north of here even as the crow fly
The river flows on and refuses to die.
From a rill to a stream and into a river it grow
As rills and streams from other hills into it flow
It babbles and gurgles by hedgerow and tree
On it's forever journey on down to the sea.
A creek, brook, stream or river call it what you may
Near the ocean it grows to a huge water-way
And Humans like the Seasons to life come and go
But the river forever to the ocean flow
poem by Francis Duggan
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Only a Matter of Time
DOWN-SLIPPING Time, sweet, swift, and shallow stream,
Here, like a boulder, lies this afternoon
Across your eager flow. So you shall stay,
Deepened and dammed, to let me breathe and be.
Your troubled fluency, your running gleam
Shall pause, and circle idly, still and clear:
The while I lie and search your glassy pool
Where, gently coiling in their lazy round,
Unseparable minutes drift and swim,
Eddy and rise and brim. And I will see
How many crystal bubbles of slack Time
The mind can hold and cherish in one Now!
Now, for one concious vacancy of sense,
The stream is gathered in a depening pond,
Not a mere moving mirror. Through the sharp
Correct reflection of the standing scene
The mind can dip, and cleanse itself with rest,
And see, slow spinning in the lucid gold,
Your liquid notes, imperishable Time.
It cannot be. The runnel slips away:
The clear smooth downward sluice begins again,
More brightly slanting for that trembling pause,
Leaving the sense its conscious vague unease
As when a sonnet flashes on the mind,
Trembles and burns an instant, and is gone.
poem by Christopher Morley
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Air Of Diabelli's
CALL it to mind, O my love.
Dear were your eyes as the day,
Bright as the day and the sky;
Like the stream of gold and the sky above,
Dear were your eyes in the grey.
We have lived, my love, O, we have lived, my love!
Now along the silent river, azure
Through the sky's inverted image,
Softly swam the boat that bore our love,
Swiftly ran the shallow of our love
Through the heaven's inverted image,
In the reedy mazes round the river.
See along the silent river,
See of old the lover's shallop steer.
Berried brake and reedy island,
Heaven below and only heaven above.
Through the sky's inverted image
Swiftly swam the boat that bore our love.
Berried brake and reedy island,
Mirrored flower and shallop gliding by.
All the earth and all the sky were ours,
Silent sat the wafted lovers,
Bound with grain and watched by all the sky,
Hand to hand and eye to . . . eye.
Days of April, airs of Eden,
Call to mind how bright the vanished angel hours,
Golden hours of evening,
When our boat drew homeward filled with flowers.
O darling, call them to mind; love the past, my love.
Days of April, airs of Eden.
How the glory died through golden hours,
And the shining moon arising;
How the boat drew homeward filled with flowers.
Age and winter close us slowly in.
Level river, cloudless heaven,
Islanded reed mazes, silver weirs;
How the silent boat with silver
Threads the inverted forest as she goes,
Broke the trembling green of mirrored trees.
O, remember, and remember
How the berries hung in garlands.
Still in the river see the shallop floats.
Hark! Chimes the falling oar.
Still in the mind
Hark to the song of the past!
Dream, and they pass in their dreams.
Those that loved of yore, O those that loved of yore!
Hark through the stillness, O darling, hark!
Through it all the ear of the mind
Knows the boat of love. Hark!
Chimes the falling oar.
O half in vain they grew old.
Now the halcyon days are over,
Age and winter close us slowly round,
And these sounds at fall of even
Dim the sight and muffle all the sound.
And at the married fireside, sleep of soul and sleep of fancy,
Joan and Darby.
Silence of the world without a sound;
And beside the winter faggot
Joan and Darby sit and dose and dream and wake -
Dream they hear the flowing, singing river,
See the berries in the island brake;
Dream they hear the weir,
See the gliding shallop mar the stream.
Hark! in your dreams do you hear?
Snow has filled the drifted forest;
Ice has bound the . . . stream.
Frost has bound our flowing river;
Snow has whitened all our island brake.
Berried brake and reedy island,
Heaven below and only heaven above azure
Through the sky's inverted image
Safely swam the boat that bore our love.
Dear were your eyes as the day,
Bright ran the stream, bright hung the sky above.
Days of April, airs of Eden.
How the glory died through golden hours,
And the shining moon arising,
How the boat drew homeward filled with flowers.
Bright were your eyes in the night:
We have lived, my love;
O, we have loved, my love.
Now the . . . days are over,
Age and winter close us slowly round.
Vainly time departs, and vainly
Age and winter come and close us round.
Hark the river's long continuous sound.
Hear the river ripples in the reeds.
Lo, in dreams they see their shallop
Run the lilies down and drown the weeds
Mid the sound of crackling faggots.
So in dreams the new created
Happy past returns, to-day recedes,
And they hear once more,
From the old years,
Yesterday returns, to-day recedes,
And they hear with aged hearing warbles
Love's own river ripple in the weeds.
And again the lover's shallop;
Lo, the shallop sheds the streaming weeds;
And afar in foreign countries
In the ears of aged lovers.
And again in winter evens
Starred with lilies . . . with stirring weeds.
In these ears of aged lovers
Love's own river ripples in the reeds.
poem by Robert Louis Stevenson
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Mighty River
From deep underground I start unseen
Cool spring water fresh and clean
My only life not visible to the eye
I start to flow, as if the earth did cry
Small and feint I start to trickle
As I flow the land I tickle
As in life we may start as little springs
But soon we grow and do big things
Down the mountains I start to flow
As my intensity starts to grow
My banks are now so far apart
So much wider that at the start
I twist and turn, will I ever stop
I`ve been winding forever right from the top
From a tint trickle to a steady stream
To reach the ocean is my only dream
My veins alive with creatures big and small
Within my belly I carry them all
Life within me does explode
No matter how much I can take the load
Over rocks and boulders I do roar
While above me the fish eagle`s soar
Swollen now I my banks do burst
Hungry lands I feed, they so do thirst
I fill the valley and form a lake
To try and stop me would be a mistake
I push on forward one goal in mind
To reach the ocean, sealed and signed
I`ve cut a groove across this land
But now a lap the ocean sand
Right at the end I reached my goal
Now the ocean waves a feed my soul
poem by Vaughn Bekker
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The Spell
OUR boat has drifted with the stream
That stirs the river's full sweet bosom
And now she stays where gold flags gleam
By meadow-sweet's pale foam of blossom.
Sedge-warblers sing the sun the song
The nightingale sings to the shadows;
Forget-me-nots grow all along
The fringes of the happy meadows.
See the wet lilies' golden beads!
The river-nymphs for necklace string them,
And in the sighing of the reeds
You hear the song their lovers sing them.
Gold sun, blue air, green shimmering leaves,
The weir's old song--the wood's old story--
Such spells the enchanting Summer weaves
She holds me in a web of glory.
And you--with head against my arm
And subtle wiles that seek to hold me--
Not even you can add a charm
To the sweet sorceries that enfold me.
Yet lean there still! The hour is ours;
If we should move the charm might shiver
And joyless sun and scentless flowers
Might mock a disenchanted river.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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