THE LITTLE RIVER
Let mighty pens praise mighty rivers—
The Yang-tse-Kiang or Hoang-Ho,
In climes that desiccate the livers
Of foreigners who come and go.
Some may prefer the Mississippi,
Others the Nile, whose genial flood
Enriches the industrious “Gippy”
With gifts of fertilizing mud.
Bates found the Amazon amazing;
But, all unfit for lordly themes;
I choose the simpler task of praising
One of our humble Berkshire streams.
Here are no tropical surprises,
No cataracts roaring from the steep;
No hippo your canoe capsizes,
No rhinos on the bather creep.
Here, as along the banks you potter,
The fiercest creature is the gnat;
You may perhaps espy an otter,
You’re sure to see a water-rat.
The kingfisher, a living jewel,
On halcyon days darts in and out,
But never interrupts the duel
Between the angler and the trout.
Hard by the plovers wheel and clamour,
The gold is still upon the gorse,
And mystery and calm and glamour
Brood o’er the little river’s source,
Where, in a pool of blue-green lustre,
The water bubbles from the sand,
And pine-trees in a solemn cluster
Like sentinels around it stand.
And thence, through level champaign gliding,
Past cottages with russet tiles,
Past marsh and mead the stream goes sliding
For half-a-dozen tranquil miles,
Till, with its waters still untainted
And fringed with waving starwort stems,
With towns and factories unacquainted,
It merges in the silver Thames.
“Scorn not small things; their charm endears them,”
The ancient poet wisely sang;
Great rivers man admires but fears them;
We love our homely little Pang.