Thirty Poems/The Night Journey of a River
THE NIGHT JOURNEY OF A RIVER.
Oh River, gentle River! gliding onIn silence underneath this starless sky!Thine is a ministry that never restsEven while the living slumber. For a timeThe meddler, man, hath left the elementsIn peace; the ploughman breaks the clods no more;The miner labors not, with steel and fire,To rend the rock, and he that hews the stone,And he that fells the forest, he that guidesThe loaded wain, and the poor animalThat drags it, have forgotten, for a time,Their toils, and share the quiet of the earth. Thou pansest not in thine allotted task, Oh darkling River! Through the night I hearThy wavelets rippling on the pebbly beach;I hear thy current stir the rustling sedge,That skirts thy bed; thou intermittest notThine everlasting journey, drawing onA silvery train from many a woodland spring,And mountain brook. The dweller by thy side,Who moored his little boat upon thy beach,Though all the waters that upbore it thenHave slid away o'or night, shall find, at morn,Thy channel filled with waters freshly drawnFrom distant cliffs and hollows where the rillComes up amid the water-flags. All nightThou givest moisture to the thirsty rootsOf the lithe willow and o'erhanging plane,And cherishest the herbage of thy bank,Spotted with little flowers, and sendest upPerpetually, the vapors from thy face,To steep the hills with dew, or darken heavenWith drifting clouds, that trail the shadowy shower. Oh River! darkling River! what a voiceIs that thou utterest while all else is still—The ancient voice that, centuries ago,Sounded between thy hills, while Rome was yetA weedy solitude by Tiber's stream.How many, at this hour, along thy course,Slumber to thine eternal murmurings,That mingle with the utterance of their dreams!At dead of night the child awakes and hearsThy soft, familiar dashings, and is soothed,And sleeps again. An airy multitudeOf little echoes, all unheard by day,Faintly repeat, till morning, after thee,The story of thine endless goings forth. Yet there are those who lie beside thy bedFor whom thou once didst rear the bowers that screenThy margin, and didst water the green fields;And now there is no night so still that theyCan hear thy lapse; their slumbers, were thy voice Louder than ocean's, it could never break.For them the early violet no moreOpens upon thy bank, nor, for their eyes,Glitter the crimson pictures of the clouds,Upon thy bosom, when the sun goes down.Their memories are abroad, the memoriesOf those who last were gathered to the earth,Lingering within the homes in which they sat,Hovering above the paths in which they walked,Haunting them like a presence. Even nowThey visit many a dreamer in the formsThey walked in, ore at last they wore the shroud.And eyes there are which will not close to dream,For weeping and for thinking of the grave,The new-made grave, and the pale one within.These memories and these sorrows all shall fade,And pass away, and fresher memoriesAnd newer sorrows come and dwell awhile,Beside thy borders, and, in turn, depart. On glide thy waters, till at last they flowBeneath the windows of the populous town,And all night long give back the gleam of lamps,And glimmer with the trains of light that streamFrom halls where dancers whirl. A dimmer rayTouches thy surface from the silent roomIn which they tend the sick, or gather roundThe dying; and a slender, steady beamComes from the little chamber, in the roofWhere, with a feverous crimson on her check,The solitary damsel, dying, too,Plies the quick needle till the stars grow pale.There, close beside the haunts of revel, standThe blank, unlighted windows, where the poor,In hunger and in darkness, wake till morn.There, drowsily, on the half conscious earOf the dull watchman, pacing on the wharf,Falls the soft ripple of the waves that strikeOn the moored bark; but guiltier listeners Are nigh, the prowlers of the night, who stealFrom shadowy nook to shadowy nook, and startIf other sounds than thine are in the air. Oh, glide away from those abodes, that bringPollution to thy channel and make foulThy once clear current; summon thy quick wavesAnd dimpling eddies; linger not, but haste,With all thy waters, haste thee to the deep,There to be tossed by shifting winds and rockedBy that mysterious force which lives withinThe sea's immensity, and wields the weightOf its abysses, swaying to and froThe billowy mass, until the stain, at length,hall wholly pass away, and thou regainThe crystal brightness of thy mountain springs.