Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 011.djvu/473

Farther than wont from thy fountain home,
Beautiful stranger, thy steps have come:
What has brought thee, sunny-hair'd sister, say,
So far from thy silver bower to-day?

I have traced from my urn the shining stream
For the fairest flowers in its waves that gleam.

Far up thy brook there is many a flower—
Were they all too few to enwreathe thy bower?
Thy coronal still is fresh and fair—
Wouldst thou place one brighter, sweet stranger, there?

Oh no, it is not for these locks of mine
I have come so far my braid to twine;
But I cull these flowers, my banks along,
To crown the harp of a child of song:
Long, long my waters unheard had roll'd—
That harp has given them sands of gold!

In the faint sweet light of the vesper star,
I have heard thy voice, fair sister, afar,
And grieved, as I listen'd along the shore,
I could catch of the distant song no more.—
Oh, since we are met, wilt thou pour again
A single lay of the liquid strain?

My dwelling is the diamond wave,
That sparkles in the golden day;
The fairest things my waters lave
Can ne'er be half so fair as they:
I rest, but sleep not, when the moon
Is gleaming on my shadowy tide;
Mine is the wood's green gloom at noon,
And mine each flower of summer's pride.

The mirror of the stars is mine—
To me from earliest time 'twas given
To catch, in all their dyes divine,
The brightest smiles of Earth and Heaven:
All things have changed, my fountains round,—
Yet still my pure stream winds along,
As in the dawn of time it wound,
With wave all light and voice all song!

Sister, I grieve, ere thy strain be o'er,
To part from this loved and lonely shore;
But I heard from the deep—and hark! again
The echo swings over the gold-blue main.—
Too well I know 'tis the Triton's shell—
Sunny-hair'd sister, farewell—farewell! J.