The Torrent

And here thy footsteps stopped? This writhing swell.
This surging, mad, voluminous, white stream,
Burst starving from the hills, knows what befell
That instant in the clear mid-summer beam?
To me in the grey, azure iris-bed
Of the old garden I was left to tend.
And tended, came the word that thou wert dead . . .
Is it on these round eddies I must spend
My passionate conjecture? Thou art gone;
And I am brought to these orchestral shores.
This clanging music where I dare not moan.
Dare not lament! Fountain from fountain pours —
Yea, they have borne thee, yea, they bear thee on
To the smooth-rushing waters of the Rhone.