The Soul of the Brook.
UNDER the green wave, its own supple way,
Flow the long, green-haired mosses, undulate
Within the weaving arms of waters, aye
Outrunning them, to leap the great sluice-gate;
Tremulous as light or wave, the sleek weeds sway,
Smooth as a water-snake, invertebrate,
The Soul of the lost water that must stay,
Although the body of the brook lies grey,
Far down, beneath the grim piers of its fate.
O lost! A water slain to radiant sun
And the white glory of the moon, it sleeps,
Or winds and wallows in o'erdarkened deeps,
And coils and sighs, like some trapped, blinded one,
That high against the slimy darkness leaps,
Moaning and clutching at the walls, undone,
Till neath the earth it slides, and, crying, creeps
To the vast, subterranean pool that keeps
The bodies of slain waters, dead and gone.
There, the lost waters of the wide world rest
In immemorial tomb: the vanished seas
That once men knew and know no more; and these Doomed and dread lakes, by howling night obsessed, Stagnate with scum, and with black, bitter lees. There seethe and coil as serpents, breast to breast, Fountains that once leaped high in rainbow'd breeze, And loll, enamoured of their awful ease,
Old, primal streams, forgetful of dead quest.
But hourly, running with the leaping stream
That hourly seeks its grave, the mosses thrill,
The Soul of the lost water-course lives still,
Running, yet moving not, as in a dream;
The Soul the yawning sluice-gates cannot kill,
The water-weed that keeps the song, the gleam
Of the lost water, surer than the hill
Its echoes, murmuring of its wayward will,
The brook's, low-lying at its last extreme!
The Smiling Water.
FAR off, in sun-soaked fields of meadowsweet,
Shaken with silent laughter a water lies,
Mysteriously smiling to the skies
Its lovely dreams that it may not repeat;
Nay, though the sunlight's jewelled daggers sink
Deep in its dark, sweet bosom's amethyst;
And white, imperial grasses lean and list
For some strange, whispered secret, by its brink.
It lives, a breathless, innocent, pure thing;
And round it spring a million star-souled flowers,
And wave and wander scented winds and showers,
Too rapt-in-love for further wandering.
A light, low sighing, waking on still nights,
Betrays alone some hint to wondering earth
Of the glad secret that with gentle mirth
The water of the silent laughter lights.
A magic valley its wild peace besets,
Green-sprayed with gossamer fern and shining frond, The restless, radiant water that beyond
Would flash, and to some vague goal's vortex frets;
By night the glory of its glitter slakes
The leaning trees' dim, velvet foliage,
Its goblets of cool golden wine assuage
The traveller clouds, wide-strayed from heavenly
Lo! Wreathed in eddying smiles that lure and mock
The water of the silent laughter leaps
Across pale Time, and even when Memory sleeps
I hear the roaring of the fairy lock:
The fairy roaring of a far-off weir
Falling in hazy cascades of cool spray,
A music exquisite and lost and gay,
Across the tense, delirious hour I hear.
My life is haunted by this fairy fall,
This lovely water that, across the years,
Laughs with bright innocency at my tears;
And the world's loud, insensate carnival
Becomes a dream, when near I hear it roll,
The laughter of a brimming wave that knows
More than the secret it will not disclose-
Knows the lost, wayward laughter of my soul!
Laugh and be Merry.
LAUGH and be merry, remember, better the world
Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong. Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of
Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man.
Laugh and be merry: remember, in olden time,
God made Heaven and Earth for joy He took in a rhyme,
Made them, and filled them full with the strong red wine of His mirth,
The splendid joy of the stars: the joy of the earth.
So we must laugh and drink from the deep blue cup of the sky,
Join the jubilant song of the great stars sweeping by, Laugh, and battle, and work, and drink of the wine outpoured
In the dear green earth, the sign of the joy of the
Lord.
Laugh and be merry together, like brothers akin,
Guesting awhile in the rooms of a beautiful inn,
Glad till the dancing stops, and the lilt of the music
ends,
Laugh till the game is played; Oh, be you merry, my friends.
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