[From Poems on Life and Duty.] THE STREAM OF LIFE. O stream descending to the sea, In garden plots the children play, O life descending into death, Strong purposes our mind possess, We toil and earn, we seek and learn, O end to which our currents tend, To which we flow, what do we know, A roar we hear upon thy shore, Scarce we divine a sun will shine And be above us still. [From The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich.] THE HIGHLAND STREAM, There is a stream (I name not its name, lest inquisitive tourist Hunt it, and make it a lion, and get it at last into guide-books), Springing far off from a loch unexplored in the folds of great mountains, Falling two miles through rowan and stunted alder, enveloped Then for four more in a forest of pine, where broad and ample Spreads, to convey it, the glen with heathery slopes on both sides: Broad and fair the stream, with occasional falls and narrows; But, where the glen of its course approaches the vale of the river, Met and blocked by a huge interposing mass of granite, Scarce by a channel deep-cut, raging up, and raging onward, Forces its flood through a passage so narrow a lady would step it. There, across the great rocky wharves, a wooden bridge goes, Ten feet wide and eighteen long, with whiteness and fury Here, the pride of the plunger, you stride the fall and clear it ; Here, the delight of the bather, you roll in beaded sparklings, Here into pure green depth drop down from lofty ledges. ELSPIE AND PHILIP But a revulsion wrought in the brain and bosom of Elspie; And the passion she just had compared to the vehement ocean, Urging in high spring-tide its masterful way through the moun. tains, Forcing and flooding the silvery stream, as it runs from the inland ; That great power withdrawn, receding here and passive, Felt she in myriad springs, her sources far in the mountains, As he was kissing her fingers, and knelt on the ground before her, Yielding backward she sank to her seat, and of what she was doing Ignorant, bewildered, in sweet multitudinous vague emotion, Stooping, knowing not what, put her lips to the hair on his forehead: And Philip, raising himself, gently, for the first time round her Passing his arms, close, close, enfolded her, close to his bosom. As they went home by the moon, Forgive me, Philip, she whispered; I have so many things to think of, all of a sudden ; I who had never once thought a thing,-in my ignorant Highlands. PHILIP TO ADAM, These are fragments again without date addressed to Adam. Drawn by moon and sun from Labrador and Greenland, But as the light of day enters some populous city, Shaming away, ere it come, by the chilly day-streak signal, Permeates far and pierces to the very cellars lying in Up at the windows, or down, letting in the air by the doorway, Early clerk anon turning out to stroll, or it may be Meet his sweetheart-waiting behind the garden gate there; Merchant on his grass-plat haply bare-headed; and now by this time Little child bringing breakfast to 'father' that sits on the timber So that the whole great wicked artificial civilised fabric— [From Songs in Absence.] COME BACK! Come back, come back, behold with straining mast, And swelling sail, behold her steaming fast; With one new sun to see her voyage o'er, With morning light to touch her native shore. Come back, come back, while westward labouring by, See how the gale we fight with sweeps her back, Come back, come back. Come back, come back, across the flying foam, Come back, come back; and whither back or why? Come back, come back; and whither and for what? Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave, Come back, come back. Come back, come back; yea back, indeed, do go Come back, come back. Come back, come back, more eager than the breeze, And lighter far than ocean's flying foam, Come back, come back! Back flies the foam; the hoisted flag streams back; The long smoke wavers on the homeward track, Back fly with winds things which the winds obey, The strong ship follows its appointed way. |