Musings on Rivers

Beautiful rivers! that adown the vale
With graceful passage journey to the deep,
Let me along your grassy marge recline
At ease, and musing, meditate the strange
Bright history of your life; yes, from your birth,
Has beauty's shadow chased your every step;
The blue sea was your mother, and the sun
Your glorious sire: clouds your voluptuous cradle,
Roof 'd with o'erarching rainbows; and your fall
To earth was cheer'd with shout of happy birds,
With brighten'd faces of reviving flowers
And meadows, while the sympathising west
Took holiday, and donn'd her richest robes.
From deep, mysterious wanderings your springs
Break bubbling into beauty; where they lie
In infant helplessness a while, but soon
Gathering in tiny brooks, they gambol down
The steep sides of the mountain, laughing, shouting,
Teasing the wild flowers, and at every turn
Meeting new playmates still to swell their ranks;
Which, with the rich increase resistless grown,
Shed foam and thunder, that the echoing wood
Rings with the boisterous glee; while o'er their heads,
Catching their spirit blithe, young rainbows sport,
The frolic children of the wanton sun.
Nor is your swelling prime, or green old age,
Though calm, unlovely; still, where'er ye move,
Your train is beauty; trees stand grouping by
To mark your graceful progress: giddy flowers,
And vain, as beauties wont, stoop o'er the verge
To greet their faces in your flattering glass;
The thirsty herd are following at your side;
And water-birds, in clustering fleets, convoy
Your sea-bound tides; and jaded man, released
From worldly thraldom, here his dwelling plants,
Here pauses in your pleasant neighbourhood,
Sure of repose along your tranquil shores.
And when your end approaches, and ye blend
With the eternal ocean, ye shall fade
As placidly as when an infant dies;
And the death-angel shall your powers withdraw
Gently as twilight takes the parting day,
And, with a soft and gradual decline
That cheats the senses, lets it down to night.
Bountiful rivers! not upon the earth
Is record traced of God's exuberant grace
So deeply graven as the channels worn
By ever-flowing streams: arteries of earth,
That, widely branching, circulate its blood:
Whose ever-throbbing pulses are the tides.
The whole vast enginery of Nature, all
The roused and labouring elements combine
In their production; for the mighty end
Is growth, is life to every living thing.
The sun himself is charter'd for the work:
His arm uplifts the main, and at his smile
The fluttering vapours take their flight for heaven,
Shaking the briny sea-dregs from their wings;
Here, wrought by unseen fingers, soon is wove
The cloudy tissue, till a mighty fleet,
Freighted with treasures bound for distant shores,
Floats waiting for the breeze; loosed on the sky
Rush the strong tempests, that, with sweeping breath,
Impel the vast flotilla to its port;
Where, overhanging wide the arid plain,
Drops the rich mercy down; and oft, when summer
Withers the harvest, and the lazy clouds
Drag idly at the bidding of the breeze.
New riders spur them, and enraged they rush,
Bestrode by thunders, that, with hideous shouts
And crackling thongs of fire, urge them along.
As falls the blessing, how the satiate earth
And all her race shed grateful smiles! — not here
The bounty ceases: when the drenching streams
Have, inly sinking, quench'd the greedy thirst
Of plants, of woods, some kind, invisible hand
In bright, perennial springs draws up again
For needy man and beast; and, as the brooks
Grow strong, apprenticed to the use of man,
The ponderous wheel they turn, the web to weave,
The stubborn metal forge; and, when advanced
To sober age at last, ye seek the sea,
Bearing the wealth of commerce on your backs,
Ye seem the unpaid carriers of the sky
Vouchsafed to earth for burden; and your host
Of shining branches, linking land to land,
Seem bands of friendship— silver chains of love,
To bind the world in brotherhood and peace.
Back to the primal chaos fancy sweeps
To trace your dim beginning; when dull earth
Lay sunken low, one level, plashy marsh,
Girdled with mists; while saurian reptiles, strange,
Measureless monsters, through the cloggy plain
Paddled and flounder'd; and the Almigv ty voice,
Like silver trumpet, from their hidden dens
Summon'd the central and resistless fires,
That with a groan from pole to pole upheave
The mountain-masses, and, with dreadful rent,
Fracture the rocky crust; then Andes rose,
And Alps their granite pyramids shot up,
Barren of soil; but gathering vapours round
Their stony scalps, condensed to drops, from drops
To brooks, from brooks to rivers, which set out
Over that rugged and untravell'd land,
The first exploring pilgrims, to the sea.
Tedious their route, precipitous and vague,
Seeking with humbleness the lowliest paths:
Oft shut in valleys deep, forlorn they turn
And find no vent; till, gather'd into lakes,
Topping the basin's brimming lip, they plunge
Headlong, and hurry to the level main,
Rejoicing: misty ages did they run,
And, with unceasing friction, all the while
Fritter'd to granular atoms the dense rock,
And ground it into soil— then dropp'd (O! sure
From heaven) the precious seed: first mosses, lichens
Seized on the sterile flint, and from their dust _
Sprang herbs and flowers: last from the deepening mould
Uprose to heaven in pride the princely tree,
And earth was fitted for her coming lord.