Rivers

Rivers I have seen which were beautiful,Slow rivers winding in the flat fens,With bands of reeds like thronged green swordsGuarding the mirrored sky;And streams down-tumbling from the chalk hillsTo valleys of meadows and watercress-beds,And bridges whereunder, dark weed-coloured shadows,Trout flit or lie.

I know those rivers that peacefully glidePast old towers and shaven gardens,Where mottled walls rise from the waterAnd mills all streaked with flour;And rivers with wharves and rusty shipping,That flow with a stately tidal motionTowards their destined estuariesFull of the pride of power;

Noble great rivers, Thames and Severn,Tweed with his gateway of many grey arches,Clyde, dying at sunset westwardIn a sea as red as blood;Rhine and his hills in close procession,Placid Elbe, Seine slaty and swirling,And Isar, son of the Alpine snows,A furious turquoise flood.

All these I have known, and with slow eyesI have walked on their shores and watched them,And softened to their beauty and loved themWherever my feet have been;And a hundred others alsoWhose names long since grew into me,That, dreaming in light or darkness,I have seen, though I have not seen.

Those rivers of thought: cold Ebro,And blue racing Guadiana,Passing white houses, high-balconied,That ache in a sun-baked land,Congo, and Nile and Colorado,Niger, Indus, Zambesi,And the Yellow River, and the Oxus,And the river that dies in sand.

What splendours are theirs, what continents,What tribes of men, what basking plains,Forests and lion-hided deserts,Marshes, ravines and falls:All hues and shapes and tempersWandering they take as they wanderFrom those far springs that endlesslyThe far sea calls.

O in reverie I know the VolgaThat turns his back upon Europe,And the two great cities on his banks,Novgorod and Astrakhan;Where the world is a few soft colours,And under the dove-like eveningThe boatmen chant ancient songs,The tenderest known to man.

And the holy river Ganges,His fretted cities veiled in moonlight,Arches and buttresses silver-shadowyIn the high moon,And palms grouped in the moonlightAnd fanes girdled with cypresses,Their domes of marble softly shiningTo the high silver moon.

And that aged BrahmapootraWho beyond the white HimalayasPasses many a lamasseryOn rocks forlorn and frore,A block of gaunt grey stone wallsWith rows of little barred windows,Where shrivelled young monks in yellow silkAre hidden for evermore....

But O that great river, the Amazon,I have sailed up its gulf with eyelids closed,And the yellow waters tumbled round,And all was rimmed with sky,Till the banks drew in, and the trees' heads,And the lines of green grew higherAnd I breathed deep, and there above meThe forest wall stood high.

Those forest walls of the AmazonAre level under the blazing blueAnd yield no sound save the whistles and shrieksOf the swarming bright macaws;And under their lowest drooping boughsMud-banks torpidly bubble,And the water drifts, and logs in the waterDrift and twist and pause.

And everywhere, tacitly joining,Float noiseless tributaries,Tall avenues paved with water:And as I silent flyThe vegetation like a painted scene,Spars and spikes and monstrous fansAnd ferns from hairy sheaths up-springing,Evenly passes by.

And stealthier stagnant channelsUnder low niches of drooping leavesCoil into deep recesses:And there have I entered, thereTo heavy, hot, dense, dim placesWhere creepers climb and sweat and climb,And the drip and splash of oozing waterLoads the stifling air.

Rotting scrofulous steaming trunks,Great horned emerald beetles crawling,Ants and huge slow butterfliesThat had strayed and lost the sun;Ah, sick I have swooned as the air thickenedTo a pallid brown ecliptic glow,And on the forest, fallen with languor,Thunder has begun.

Thunder in the dun dusk, thunderRolling and battering and cracking,The caverns shudder with a terrible glareAgain and again and again,Till the land bows in the darkness,Utterly lost and defenceless,Smitten and blinded and overwhelmedBy the crashing rods of rain.

And then in the forests of the Amazon,When the rain has ended, and silence come,What dark luxuriance unfoldsFrom behind the night's drawn bars:The wreathing odours of a thousand treesAnd the flowers' faint gleaming presences,And over the clearings and the still watersSoft indigo and hanging stars.

O many and many are rivers,And beautiful are all rivers,And lovely is water everywhereThat leaps or glides or stays;Yet by starlight, moonlight, or sunlight,Long, long though they look, these wandering eyes,Even on the fairest waters of dream,Never untroubled gaze.

For whatever stream I stand by,And whatever river I dream of,There is something still in the back of my mindFrom very far away;There is something I saw and see not,A country full of riversThat stirs in my heart and speaks to meMore sure, more dear than they.

And always I ask and wonder(Though often I do not know it):Why does this water not smell like water?Where is the moss that grewWet and dry on the slabs of graniteAnd the round stones in clear brown water?--And a pale film rises before themOf the rivers that first I knew.

Though famous are the rivers of the great world,Though my heart from those alien waters drinksDelight however pure from their loveliness,And awe however deep,Would I wish for a moment the miracleThat those waters should come to Chagford,Or gather and swell in Tavy CleaveWhere the stones cling to the steep?

No, even were they Ganges and AmazonIn all their great might and majesty,League upon league of wonders,I would lose them all, and more,For a light chiming of small bells,A twisting flash in the granite,The tiny thread of a pixie waterfallThat lives by Vixen Tor.

Those rivers in that lost country,They were brown as a clear brown bead is,Or red with the earth that rain washed down,Or white with china-clay;And some tossed foaming over boulders,And some curved mild and tranquil,In wooded vales securely setUnder the fond warm day.

Okement and Erme and Avon,Exe and his ruffled shallows,I could cry as I think of those riversThat knew my morning dreams;The weir by Tavistock at eveningWhen the circling woods were purple,And the Lowman in spring with the lent-lilies,And the little moorland streams.

For many a hillside streamletThere falls with a broken tinkle,Falling and dying, falling and dying.In little cascades and pools,Where the world is furze and heatherAnd flashing plovers and fixed larks,And an empty sky, whitish blue,That small world rules.

There, there, where the high waste bog-landsAnd the drooping slopes and the spreading valleys,The orchards and the cattle-sprinkled pasturesThose travelling musics fill,There is my lost Abana,And there is my nameless PharpharThat mixed with my heart when I was a boy,And time stood still.

And I say I will go there and die there:But I do not go there, and sometimesI think that the train could not carry me there,And it's possible, maybe,That it's farther than Asia or Africa,Or any voyager's harbour,Farther, farther, beyond recall....O even in memory!