The Streams

“The power, the beauty, and the majesty,That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,Or chasms and watery depths; all those have vanish’d!They live no longer in the faith of heaven,But still the heart doth need a language!”Coleridge’s “Wallenstein.”

Ye have been holy, O founts and floods!Ye of the ancient and solemn woods,Ye that are born of the valleys deep,With the water-flowers on your breast asleep,And ye that gush from the sounding caves--Hallow’d have been your waves.

Hallow’d by man, in his dreams of old,Unto beings not of this mortal mould--Viewless and deathless, and wondrous powers,Whose voice he heard in his lonely hours,And sought with its fancied sound to stillThe heart earth could not fill.

Therefore the flowers of bright summers gone,O’er your sweet waters, ye streams! were thrownThousands of gifts to the sunny seaHave ye swept along, in your wanderings free,And thrill’d to the murmur of many a vow--Where all is silent now!

Nor seems it strange that the heart hath beenSo link’d in love to your margins green;That still, though ruin’d, your early shrinesIn beauty gleam through the southern vines,And the ivied chapels of colder skiesOn your wild banks arise.

For the loveliest scenes of the glowing earthAre those, bright streams! where your springs have birth;Whether their cavern’d murmur fills,With a tone of plaint, the hollow hills,Or the glad sweet laugh of their healthful flowIs heard midst the hamlets low.

Or whether ye gladden the desert sandsWith a joyous music to pilgrim bands,And a flash from under some ancient rock,Where a shepherd king might have watch’d his flock,Where a few lone palm-trees lift their heads,And a green acacia spreads.

Or whether, in bright old lands renown’d,The laurels thrill to your first-born sound,And the shadow, flung from the Grecian pine,Sweeps with the breeze o’er your gleaming line,And the tall reeds whisper to your waves,Beside heroic graves.

Voices and lights of the lonely place!By the freshest fern your path we trace;By the brightest cups on the emerald moss,Whose fairy goblets the turf emboss;By the rainbow-glancing of insect wings,In a thousand mazy rings.

There sucks the bee, for the richest flowersAre all your own through the summer hours;There the proud stag his fair image knows,Traced on your glass beneath alder-boughs;And the halcyon’s breast, like the skies array’d,Gleams through the willow shade.

But the wild sweet tales that with elves and faysPeopled your banks in the olden days,And the memory left by departed loveTo your antique founts in glen and grove,And the glory born of the poet’s dreams--These are your charms, bright streams!

Now is the time of your flowery ritesGone by with its dances and young delights:From your marble urns ye have burst away,From your chapel-cells to the laughing day;Low lie your altars with moss o’ergrown,And the woods again are lone.

Yet holy still be your living springs,Haunts of all gentle and gladsome things!Holy, to converse with nature’s lore,That gives the worn spirit its youth once more,And to silent thoughts of the love divine,Making the heart a shrine!