Q

[From The River.]

INFANT of the weeping hills,

Nursling of the springs and rills, Growing River, flowing ever,

Wimpling, dimpling, staying never,—

Lisping, gurgling, ever going,

Lipping, slipping, ever flowing,
Toying round the polished stone,
Kiss the sedge and journey on.
Here's a creek where bubbles come,
Whirling make your ball of foam.
There's a nook so deep and cool,
Sleep into a glassy pool.

Breaking, gushing,

Downward rushing,

Narrowing green against the bank,
Where the alders grow in rank,——
Thence recoiling,

Outward boiling,

Fret, in rough shingly shallows wide,
Your difficult way to yonder side.

Thence away, aye away,
Bickering down the sunny day,

In the Sea, in yonder West,

Lose yourself, and be at rest.
Thus from darkness weeping out,
Flows our infant Life away,

Murmuring now the checks about,
Singing now in onward play;
Deepening, whirling,

Darkly swirling,

Downward sucked in eddying coves;

Boiling with tumultuous loves;

Widening o'er the worldly sands;

Kissing full the cultured lands;
Dim with trouble, glory-lit,
Heaven still bending over it;

Changing still, yet ever going,

Onward, downward, ever flowing.

THOMAS AIRD.

I

[From Phantasmion, Part iii., Chap. iv.]

Zelneth's Song.

WAS a brook in straitest channel pent,

Forcing 'mid rocks and stones my toilsome way,

A scanty brook in wandering well nigh spent ;
But now with thee, rich stream, conjoin'd I stray,
Through golden meads the river sweeps along,
Murmuring its deep full joy in gentlest undersong.

I crept through desert moor and gloomy shade,

My waters ever vex'd, yet sad and slow,

My waters ever steep'd in baleful shade:

But whilst with thee, rich stream, conjoin'd I flow,

E'en in swift course the river seems to rest,

Blue sky, bright bloom, and verdure imag'd on its breast.

And, whilst with thee I roam through regions bright,
Beneath kind love's serene and gladsome sky,

A thousand happy things that seek the light,
Till now in darkest shadow forc'd to lie,

Up through the illumin'd waters nimbly run,

To show their forms and hues in the all-revealing sun.

SARA COLERIDGE.

[From Phantasmion, Part iii., Chap. iii.] SLOW rills that wind like snakes amid the grass.

S. COLERIDGE.

Two Rivers.

HY summer voice, Musketaquit,

THY

Repeats the music of the rain;

But sweeter rivers pulsing flit

Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain.

Thou in thy narrow banks are pent:

The stream I love unbounded goes

Through flood and sea and firmament;

Through light, through life, it forward flows.

I see the inundation sweet,

I hear the spending of the stream

Through years, through men, through nature fleet, Through love and thought, through power and dream.

Musketaquit, a goblin strong,
Of shard and flint makes jewels gay ;
They lose their grief who hear his song,
And where he winds is the day of day.

So forth and brighter fares my stream,—
Who drink it shall not thirst again;
No darkness stains its equal gleam,
And ages drop in it like rain.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

[From Woodnotes.—ii.]

THE river knows the way to the sea;
Without a pilot it runs and falls,

Blessing all lands with its charity.

EMERSON.

[From Roland's Tower.]

LIKE a courser starting from the spur,

Rushes the deep-blue current of the Rhine.
LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON.

[From King Arthur, Book i.]

AND the still river shining as it flows,

Calm as a soul on which the heavens repose.

EDWARD, LORD LYTTON.

[From Kenelm Chillingley, Book iii., Chap. xi.]

Love's Quarrel.

STANDING by the river, gazing on the river,

See it paved with starbeams; heaven is at our feet. Now the wave is troubled, now the rushes quiver; Vanished is the starlight-it was a deceit.

Comes a little cloudlet 'twixt ourselves and heaven,
And from all the river fades the silver track;
Put thine arms around me, whisper low "Forgiven !”-
See how on the river starlight settles back.

LORD LYTTON.

[From The Dispute of the Poets.]

A SHADOWY rill

Melodious with the chime of falls as sweet

As (heard by Pan in Arethusan glades)

The silvery talk of meeting Naïades.

LORD LYTTON.

[From The Poet to the Dead.]

GLIDES the brooklet thro' the rushes,

Now with dipping boughs at play,

Now with quicker music-gushes

Where the pebbles chafe the way.

LORD LYTTON.