Down through chasms and gulfs profound, To the dreary fountain-head

Of lakes and rivers under ground;

And sees them, when the rain is done,
On the bridge of colors seven

Climbing up once more to heaven,

Opposite the setting sun.

Thus the Seer,

With vision clear,

Sees forms appear and disappear,
In the perpetual round of strange,
Mysterious change

From birth to death, from death to birth,
From earth to heaven, from heaven to
earth;

Till glimpses more sublime

Of things, unseen before,'

Unto his wondering eyes reveal

The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel
Turning forevermore

In the rapid and rushing river of Time.

1845.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

SONG OF 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.

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90

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 brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

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 forefand set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,

And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel

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With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy 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 shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

1855.

Lord Tennyson.

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52

FEBRUARY

NOON-and the north-west sweeps the empty road,

The rain-washed fields from hedge to hedge are bare;

Beneath the leafless elms some hind's abode Looks small and void, and no smoke meets the air

From its poor hearth: one lonely rook doth dare

The gale, and beats above the unseen corn, Then turns, and whirling down the wind is borne.

Shall it not hap that on some dawn of May
Thou shalt awake, and, thinking of days dead,
See nothing clear but this same dreary day,
Of all the days that have passed o'er thine
head?

Shalt thou not wonder, looking from thy bed. Through green leaves on the windless east a-fire, That this day too thine heart doth still desire? 14

Shalt thou not wonder that it liveth yet,
The useless hope, the useless craving pain,

That made thy face, that lonely noontide wet
With more than beating of the chilly rain?
Shalt thou not hope for joy new born again,
Since no grief eyer born can ever die
Through changeless change of seasons passing
by?

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MARCH

SLAYER of the winter, art thou here again? O welcome, thou that bring'st the summer nigh!

The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain, Now will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky. 罩

Welcome, O March! whose kindly days

and dry

Make April ready for the throstle's song,

Thou first redresser of the winter's wrong! 7

Yea, welcome, March! and though I die ere June,

Yet for the hope of life I give thee praise, Striving to swell the burden of the tune

That even now I hear thy brown birds raise, Unmindful of the past or coming days;' / Who sing: "O joy! a new year is begun: What happiness to look upon the sun!”

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