The Home Book of Verse
Chapter 305 : The hills are white, but not with snow: They are as pale in summer time, For herb or g

The hills are white, but not with snow: They are as pale in summer time, For herb or gra.s.s may never grow Upon their slopes of lime.

Within the circle of the hills A ring, all flowering in a round, An orchard-ring of almond fills The plot of stony ground.

More fair than happier trees, I think, Grown in well-watered pasture land These parched and stunted branches, pink Above the stones and sand.

O white, austere, ideal place, Where very few will care to come, Where spring hath lost the waving grace She wears for us at home!

Fain would I sit and watch for hours The holy whiteness of thy hills, Their wreath of pale auroral flowers, Their peace the silence fills.

A place of secret peace thou art, Such peace as in an hour of pain One moment fills the amazed heart, And never comes again.

A. Mary F. Robinson [1857-

THE TIDE RIVER From "The Water Babies"

Clear and cool, clear and cool, By laughing shallow and dreaming pool; Cool and clear, cool and clear, By s.h.i.+ning s.h.i.+ngle and foaming weir; Under the crag where the ouzel sings, And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings, Undefiled, for the undefiled; Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.

Dank and foul, dank and foul, By the smoky town in its murky cowl; Foul and dank, foul and dank, By wharf and sewer and slimy bank; Darker and darker the farther I go, Baser and baser the richer I grow; Who dare sport with the sin-defiled?

Shrink from me, turn from me, mother and child.

Strong and free, strong and free, The flood-gates are open, away to the sea.

Free and strong, free and strong, Cleansing my streams as I hurry along, To the golden sands, and the leaping bar, And the taintless tide that awaits me afar.

As I lose myself in the infinite main, Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again, Undefiled, for the undefiled; Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.

Charles Kingsley [1819-1875]

THE BROOK'S SONG From "The Brook"

I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorps, a little town, And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow To join the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a l.u.s.ty trout, And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake Upon me, as I travel With many a silvery water-break Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow To join the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and gra.s.sy plots, I slide by hazel covers; I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeam dance Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses; I linger by my s.h.i.+ngly bars; I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow To join the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.

Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892]

ARETHUSA

Arethusa arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains,-- From cloud and from crag, With many a jag, Shepherding her bright fountains.

She leapt down the rocks With her rainbow locks Streaming among the streams; Her steps paved with green The downward ravine Which slopes to the western gleams: And gliding and springing, She went, ever singing, In murmurs as soft as sleep; The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep.

Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook, And opened a chasm In the rocks;--with the spasm All Erymanthus shook.

And the black south wind It unsealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder Did rend in sunder The bars of the springs below: And the beard and the hair Of the River-G.o.d were Seen through the torrent's sweep, As he followed the light Of the fleet nymph's flight To the brink of the Dorian deep.

"Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!

And bid the deep hide me!

For he grasps me now by the hair!"

The loud Ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended, Her billows, unblended With the brackish Dorian stream.

Like a gloomy stain On the emerald main, Alpheus rushed behind,-- As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearled thrones; Through the coral woods Of the weltering floods, Over heaps of unvalued stones; Through the dim beams Which amid the streams Weave a network of colored light; And under the caves Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night:-- Outspeeding the shark, And the swordfish dark,-- Under the Ocean's foam, And up through the rifts Of the mountain clifts, They pa.s.sed to their Dorian home.

And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks.

At sunrise they leap From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; At noontide they flow Through the woods below And the meadows of asphodel; And at night they sleep In the rocking deep Beneath the Ortygian sh.o.r.e;-- Like spirits that lie In the azure sky.

When they love but live no more.

Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley [1792-1822]

THE CATARACT OF LODORE

"How does the water Come down at Lodore?"

My little boy asked me Thus, once on a time; And moreover he tasked me To tell him in rhyme.

Anon, at the word, There first came one daughter, And then came another, To second and third The request of their brother, And to hear how the water Comes down at Lodore, With its rush and its roar, As many a time They had seen it before.

So I told them in rhyme, For of rhymes I had store; And 'twas in my vocation For their recreation That so I should sing; Because I was Laureate To them and the King.

From its sources which well In the tarn on the fell; From its fountains In the mountains, Its rills and its gills; Through moss and through brake, It runs and it creeps For a while, till it sleeps In its own little lake.

And thence at departing, Awakening and starting, It runs through the reeds, And away it proceeds, Through meadow and glade, In sun and in shade, And through the wood-shelter, Among crags in its flurry, Helter-skelter, Hurry-skurry.