Oh, how the spouts are bubbling with the rain!
And all the earth shines like a silver cup!
ON A MIDGE.
Whence do ye come, ye creature? Each of you Is perfect as an angel; wings and eyes Stupendous in their beauty--gorgeous dyes In feathery fields of purple and of blue!
Would God I saw a moment as ye do!
I would become a molecule in size, Rest with you, hum with you, or slanting rise Along your one dear sunbeam, could I view The pearly secret which each tiny fly, Each tiny fly that hums and bobs and stirs, Hides in its little breast eternally >From you, ye prickly grim philosophers, With all your theories that sound so high:
Hark to the buzz a moment, my good sirs!
ON A WATERFALL.
Here stands a giant stone from whose far top Comes down the sounding water.Let me gaze Till every sense of man and human ways Is wrecked and quenched for ever, and I drop Into the whirl of time, and without stop Pass downward thus! Again my eyes I raise To thee, dark rock; and through the mist and haze My strength returns when I behold thy prop Gleam stern and steady through the wavering wrack Surely thy strength is human, and like me Thou bearest loads of thunder on thy back!
And, lo, a smile upon thy visage black--
A breezy tuft of grass which I can see Waving serenely from a sunlit crack!
Above my head the great pine-branches tower Backwards and forwards each to the other bends, Beckoning the tempest-cloud which hither wends Like a slow-laboured thought, heavy with power;Hark to the patter of the coming shower!
Let me be silent while the Almighty sends His thunder-word along; but when it ends I will arise and fashion from the hour Words of stupendous import, fit to guard High thoughts and purposes, which I may wave, When the temptation cometh close and hard, Like fiery brands betwixt me and the grave Of meaner things--to which I am a slave If evermore I keep not watch and ward.
I do remember how when very young, I saw the great sea first, and heard its swell As I drew nearer, caught within the spell Of its vast size and its mysterious tongue.
How the floor trembled, and the dark boat swung With a man in it, and a great wave fell Within a stone's cast! Words may never tell The passion of the moment, when I flung All childish records by, and felt arise A thing that died no more! An awful power I claimed with trembling hands and eager eyes, Mine, mine for ever, an immortal dower.--The noise of waters soundeth to this hour, When I look seaward through the quiet skies.
ON THE SOURCE OF THE ARVE.
Hear'st thou the dash of water loud and hoarse With its perpetual tidings upward climb, Struggling against the wind? Oh, how sublime!
For not in vain from its portentous source, Thy heart, wild stream, hath yearned for its full force, But from thine ice-toothed caverns dark as time At last thou issuest, dancing to the rhyme Of thy outvolleying *******! Lo, thy course Lies straight before thee as the arrow flies, Right to the ocean-plains.Away, away!
Thy parent waits thee, and her sunset dyes Are ruffled for thy coming, and the gray Of all her glittering borders flashes high Against the glittering rocks: oh, haste, and fly!