| |
| O DARK mysterious stream, I sit by thee | |
| In awe profound, as myriad wanderers | |
| Have sat before. I see thy waters move | |
| From out the ghostly glimmerings of my lamp | |
| Into the dark beyond, as noiselessly | 5 |
| As if thou wert a sombre river drawn | |
| Upon a spectral canvas, or the stream | |
| Of dim Oblivion flowing through the lone | |
| And shadowy vale of death. There is no wave | |
| To whisper on thy shore, or breathe a wail, | 10 |
| Wounding its tender bosom on thy sharp | |
| And jagged rocks. Innumerous mingled tones, | |
| The voices of the day and of the night, | |
| Are ever heard through all our outer world, | |
| For Nature there is never dumb; but here | 15 |
| I turn and turn my listening ear, and catch | |
| No mortal sound, save that of my own heart, | |
| That mid the awful stillness throbs aloud, | |
| Like the far sea-surfs low and measured beat | |
| Upon its rocky shore. But when a cry | 20 |
| Or shout or song is raised, how wildly back | |
| Come the weird echoes from a thousand rocks, | |
| As if unnumbered airy sentinels, | |
| The genii of the spot, caught up the voice, | |
| Repeating it in wonder,—a wild maze | 25 |
| Of spirit-tones, a wilderness of sounds, | |
Earth-born but all unearthly.
Thou dost seem, | |
| O wizard stream, a river of the dead,— | |
| A river of some blasted, perished world, | |
| Wandering forever in the mystic void. | 30 |
| No breeze e’er strays across thy solemn tide; | |
| No bird e’er breaks thy surface with his wing; | |
| No star or sky or bow is ever glassed | |
| Within thy depths; no flower or blade e’er breathes | |
| Its fragrance from thy bleak banks on the air. | 35 |
| True, here are flowers, or semblances of flowers, | |
| Carved by the magic fingers of the drops | |
| That fall upon thy rocky battlements,— | |
| Fair roses, tulips, pinks, and violets,— | |
| All white as cerements of the coffined dead; | 40 |
| But they are flowers of stone, and never drank | |
| The sunshine or the dew. O sombre stream, | |
| Whence comest thou, and whither goest? Far | |
| Above, upon the surface of old Earth, | |
| A hundred rivers o’er thee pass and sweep, | 45 |
| In music and in sunshine, to the sea; | |
| Thou art not born of them. Whence comest thou, | |
| And whither goest? None of earth can know. | |
| No mortal e’er has gazed upon thy source,— | |
| No mortal seen where thy dark waters blend | 50 |
| With the abyss of Ocean. None may guess | |
| The mysteries of thy course. Perchance thou hast | |
| A hundred mighty cataracts, thundering down | |
| Toward Earth’s eternal centre; but their sound | |
| Is not for ear of man. All we can know | 55 |
| Is that thy tide rolls out, a spectre stream, | |
| From yon stupendous, frowning wall of rock, | |
| And, moving on a little way, sinks down | |
| Beneath another mass of rock as dark | |
| And frowning, even as life,—our little life,— | 60 |
| Born of one fathomless eternity, | |
| Steals on a moment and then disappears | |
| In an eternity as fathomless. | |
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