Poems (Spofford)/The River

For works with similar titles, see The River.

THE RIVER.

Your life and mine, O constant heart, have glided
Like two streams into one;
We flow along,—and now our way is guided
In shade, and now in sun.

For miles I wandered through the placid meadow
Wide stretching to the sky;
In me the wild-flower watched his painted shadow,—
In me the cloud on high.

But you on the great hillside freshly bubbled,
By secret sluices sent
From some deep source in the rock's heart untroubled,
Where sunbeam never bent.

Into the glad, free ether you came leaping;
The sunshine heard your tone,
And o'er the crested spur your wild way sweeping,
It made you all its own.

Sunshine, or streamlet, or the fleece of heaven?
The valleys upward creep,
Till your far voice beneath the starry seven
Falls singing them to sleep.

Still o'er the lofty ledges lightly dashing,
The echoes round you play;
The morning radiance in your trail is flashing,
Wild roses catch your spray.

All noontide lustre and all sylvan fragrance
About you brood and blow;
The late chill moonbeams come as pallid vagrants
To reach earth gladlier so.

By night, a shining thread of music flowing
The clear dark sky along,
The stars about you sparkling, dipping, going,
Dreams floating down your song,—

By day and night, to your advancing murmur
The crystal in his niche
Gathers; the sapling bends to you, and firmer
Plants him, and grows more rich.

The plains, below, a royal sward are keeping
For your white feet to chide,
O joyous brook, that, out of heaven leaping,
Comes wandering to my side.

Long seasons now, with sunshine in our shallows,
Green glooming o'er our deeps,
We wind, where under lea of fertile fallows
Perpetual summer sleeps.

Upon our trace we fling a foam of blossom,
The showers trend down our way,
The sacred azure darkens in our bosom,
The landscapes toward us sway.

Deeper the channel wears, and ever broader
From the exhaustless wells
The rhythmic tides, in their mysterious order,
Slide on slow silvery swells.

A gracious stream, whose banks are set with blessing,
That under tranquil skies
And into calms of golden sunset pressing
On the horizon dies,—

Or drawn to seek the gray and wondrous fountains,
Far sounding, shall it be,
A river rushing between mighty mountains
We burst upon the sea?

The hoary and illimitable ocean,
That darkly to and fro
Rocks the vast volumes of its central motion
Where no wind dares to blow!

O life my own, let not that awful swinging
Sunder us far apart,
But the eternities confess our clinging,
And pulse us heart to heart!