THE BOAT.
The boat is swiftly going,
Adown the river’s flowing;
No word beguiles the labour,
For no one knows his neighbour.
What pulls from coat the stranger,
The tawny forest-ranger?
A horn that sounds so mildly,
The stream-banks echo wildly.
Then haft and stopper screwing,
His staff to flute undoing,
Another, deftly playing,
Chimes with the cornet’s braying.
Shy sat the maid, self-chidden,
As speech were thing forbidden,
Now blend her accents willing
With flute and cornet’s trilling.
The rowers with new pleasure
Pull strokes that match the measure;
The boat the stream divideth,
And, lulled by music, glideth.
It strikes with shock the landing,
The folk are all disbanding;
“May we again meet, brother,
On board this boat or other!”
The companion to this little cabinet picture of the boat going with the stream is the crossing of the ferry. The poet offers the ferryman three times his fare, because the spirits of two friends, now dead, who crossed the same ferry with him in past years, are supposed to have gone with him.