The Waterfall
The song of the water
Doomed ever to roam,
A beautiful exile,
Afar from its home.
The cliffs on the mountain,
The grand and the gray,
They took the bright creature
And hurled it away!
I heard the wild downfall,
And knew it must spill
A passionate heart out
All over the hill.
Oh! was it a daughter
Of sorrow and sin,
That they threw it so madly
Down into the lynn?
. . .
And listen, my Sister,
For this is the song
The Waterfall taught me
The ridges among:—
"Oh where are the shadows
So cool and so sweet
And the rocks," saith the water,
"With the moss on their feet?
"Oh, where are my playmates
The wind and the flowers—
The golden and purple—
Of honey-sweet bowers,
"Mine eyes have been blinded
Because of the sun;
And moaning and moaning
I listlessly run.
"These hills are so flinty!—
Ah! tell me, dark Earth,
What valley leads back to
The place of my birth?—
"What valley leads up to
The haunts where a child
Of the caverns I sported,
The free and the wild?
"There lift me,"—it crieth,
"I faint from the heat;
With a sob for the shadows
So cool and so sweet."
Ye rocks, that look over
With never a tear,
I yearn for one half of
The wasted love here!
My sister so wistful,
You know I believe,
Like a child for the mountains
This water doth grieve.
Ah! you with the blue eyes
And golden-brown hair,
Come closer and closer
And truly declare:—
Supposing a darling
Once happened to sin,
In a passionate space,
Would you carry her in—
If your fathers and mothers,
The grand and the gray,
Had taken the weak one
And hurled her away?
The Song of Arda
(From "Annatanam".)
Low as a lute, my love, beneath the call
Of storm, I hear a melancholy wind;
The memorably mournful wind of yore
Which is the very brother of the one
That wanders, like a hermit, by the mound
Of Death, in lone Annatanam. A song
Was shaped for this, what time we heard outside
The gentle falling of the faded leaf
In quiet noons: a song whose theme doth turn
On gaps of Ruin and the gay-green clifts
Beneath the summits haunted by the moon.
Yea, much it travels to the dens of dole;
And in the midst of this strange rhyme, my lords,
Our Desolation like a phantom sits
With wasted cheeks and eyes that cannot weep
And fastened lips crampt up in marvellous pain.
A song in whose voice is the voice of the foam
And the rhyme of the wintering wave,
And the tongue of the things that eternally roam
In forest, in fell or in cave;
But mostly 'tis like to the Wind without home
In the glen of a desolate grave—
Of a deep and desolate grave.
The torrent flies over the thunder-struck clift
With many and many a call;
The leaves are swept down, and a dolorous drift
Is hurried away with the fall.
But mostly 'tis like the Wind without home
In the glen of a desolate grave—
Of a deep and desolate grave.
Whoever goes thither by night or by day
Must mutter, O Father, to Thee,
For the shadows that startle, the sounds that waylay
Are heavy to hear and to see;
And a step and a moan and a whisper for aye
Have made it a sorrow to be—
A sorrow of sorrows to be.
Oh! cover your faces and shudder, and turn
And hide in the dark of your hair,
Nor look to the Glen in the Mountains, to learn
Of the mystery mouldering there;
But rather sit low in the ashes and urn
Dead hopes in your mighty despair—
In the depths of your mighty despair.
The Helmsman
Like one who meets a staggering blow,
The stout old ship doth reel,
And waters vast go seething past—
But will it last, this fearful blast,
On straining shroud and groaning mast,
O sailor at the wheel?
His face is smitten with the wind,
His cheeks are chilled with rain;
And you were right, his hair is white,
But eyes are calm and heart is light
He does not fear the strife to-night,
He knows the roaring main.
Ho, Sailor! Will to-morrow bring
The hours of pleasant rest?
An answer low—"I do not know,
The thunders grow and far winds blow,
But storms may come and storms may go—
Our God, He judgeth best!"
Now you are right, brave mariner,
But we are not like you;
We, used to shore, our fates deplore,
And fear the more when waters roar;
So few amongst us look before,
Or stop to think that Heaven is o'er—
Ah! what you say is true.
And those who go abroad in ships,
Who seldom see the land,
But sail and stray so far away,
Should trust and pray, for are not they,
When Darkness blinds them on their way,
All guided by God's hand?
But you are wrinkled, grey and worn;
'Tis time you dwelt in peace!
Your prime is past; we fail so fast;
You may not last through every blast,
And, oh, 'tis fearful to be cast
Amongst the smothering seas!
Is there no absent face to love
That you must live alone?
If faith did fade, if friends betrayed,
And turned, and staid resolves you'd made,
Ah, still 'tis pleasant to be laid
Where you at least are known.
The answer slides betwixt our words—
"The season shines and glooms
On ship and strand, on sea and land,
But life must go and Time is spanned,
As well you know when out you stand
With Death amongst the tombs!
"It matters not to one so old
Who mourns when Fate comes round,
And one may sleep down in the deep
As well as those beneath the heap
That fifty stormy years will sweep
And trample to the ground."
Your speech is wise, brave mariner,
And we would let you be;
You speak with truth, you strive to soothe;
But, oh, the wrecks of Love and Truth,
What say you to our tears for Youth
And Beauty drowned at sea?
"Oh, talk not of the Beauty lost,
Since first these decks I trod
The hopeless stare on faces fair,
The streaming, bare, dishevelled hair,
The wild despair, the sinking—where,
Oh where, oh where?—My God!"