Let me look upon the river—it is still, and it is deep,
And would not mock the wretch who clove the silence of its breast;
Eyes that are burning, burning with the tears ye cannot weep,
Brain that to work me more of woe hast robbed the night of sleep,—
Let me look upon the river, let the river give me rest.
Let me look upon the river; though the stars are overhead,
They are far away and strange to me, a creature of the dust,
They may plough their way in light upon their ordered courses sped,
They may sweep on their long cycles with the patience of the dead:
But they cannot find a cure for grief, a grave for broken trust.
The bosom of the river is in all the world the one
That is open to my sorrow: let me look upon my friend;
If you only now would take me to your arms, and all were done,
Or my heart against the parapet would harden into stone,
Till I sunk upon your bosom all unconscious of the end.
Hist, there are drowning visions: some have lived their lives again,
When the waters filled the gates of sense as with a lover's kiss;
Some have left upon its surface all the bitter wrong and pain,
Some have lived and loved once more and thought they did not love in vain,
As they met the backward stream of life that bore them into bliss.
I shut my weary eyes upon the lamps, and that torn wrack
Of cloud that mounts and drowns the stars and waning moon in night;
I will think that I am drowning, and my willing thought send back
On the way it knows too surely, on the happy beaten track;
I will feed upon the poison of my deadly lost delight.
Only a look exchanged, a look which might have never been,
And the world had still gone round, and I had died one day in sleep,
Never awakened, never having breathed the breath too keen
Of these mountain joys and sorrows, known the gulf they overlean,
The blank rock face that looks upon love's awful sunless deep.
Oh river, what am I to you, or what are you to me,
That you mix yourself with all my life? It was upon your breast
That standing in the crowd upon your bank I came to see
Him, swaying in the boat that plunged and panted to get free
And bear him from my sight whom I had singled from the rest.
Stroke oar he was, the calm of gathered power upon his face
Though flushed with coming battle to the shores of yellow hair;
It was a lusty day of March, and this should be the race
Whereto all England's thoughts were set. I know not by what grace
We came to be so near—I only know that I was there,
Fluttered with wind and sun, and with the breath that seemed to rise
From out the crowd and float us as a wave; that one by one
We past the crews in gay review, we, feigning to be wise,
And after that no more—my fate had met me in the eyes,
And thence it was another world, ruled by another sun.
He did not light on me at once; his gaze just touched and past
The faces on the crowded bank, until it paused on mine—
Paused, and there rested, and will rest; my face will be the last
To leave him; it will hold him to my love, yes, hold him fast
Though the river rise between us, drink my life, and make no sign.
Only a look, I know not if of longing or content,
Or just a gleam of glad surprise had past between us two,
But I think that even at the first we both knew what it meant;
While my shaded eyes retiring from the light of his were bent
On the knot of azure ribbons that the mocking March winds blew
And flaunted in my face, till hardly looking I could see
He had caught the foolish symbol and was troubled at the sight;
What was Cambridge then, its crew, what all the alien world to me,
That I should stand and vaunt a hope that was not his, and be
The harbinger of failure to my hero in the fight?
Then there came a breathless moment, they were waiting for the start,
The rival boats in line, at rest, each hand-grip hard upon
A lifted oar;—through all I feel the beating of one heart;
The signal flashes, oars are wings, they fly; but as we part
He throws a bright appeal, and finds the lying favour gone!
I had sent it to the winds of March, scarce knowing what I did,
Not dreaming that his questing glance would come my way again
Till I saw his smile of triumph, and I fear my lips unbid
Must have shaped themselves in answer, for my surging blushes chid
The gladness of a heart that sought to hide itself in vain.
He went and it was over, it had only been a dream;
But it warned me of a hidden self, a life before unknown,
And it thrilled me as a dream can thrill, with now a hope supreme,
And now a creeping fear, as if in that one lightning gleam
The height of Heaven and depth of hell had suddenly been shown.
It was Alice who was with me; we were free for half a day;
She, the gentlest of my workmates, held me closely by the hand,
So she surely must have felt the shaft that struck me, if no ray
Of the sudden morning-glory touched her eyes or came her way;
Yet she joins my foes and girds at him—the bitterest of the band.
We watched the rise and fall upon the water of those wings—
The oars that flashed on either side the flying boat as one,
And the strength of all my heart that had its own life and the springs
Was transferred to him, or seemed so, in its fond imaginings,
As I hung in utter weakness till the doubtful day was won.
Then my life came back, or nearly, —it was pulsing in the crowd
That ebbed and flowed around us, making music with his name;
It was good to feel it all about, to hear it cry aloud
While I stood in happy silence with my secret unavowed,
But smiling at the pity that I dared not yet disclaim.
Had it then, indeed, been over, had I seen his face no more,
I had had a harmless vision of the wonders of the deep,
Just a lifting of the vapour as I crouched upon the shore,
And the clouds had settled down, and all had slumbered as before,
While I held a fading image I could hardly hope to keep.
But the river, yes the river, he has got my life entwined,
In his deadly silver meshes he has got my life in fee;
As the flashing wings came beating up the stream against the wind,
I turned and faced the crowd, and would have fled as flies the hind,
But it held me while the river wrought and brought my fate to me.
It held me fast, the wanton crowd, it forced me on his sight,
Feeling all my heart uncovered, with no favour on my breast;
To be found where he had left me, and to have to meet the light
Of his eyes that spoke their knowledge, and their triumph in my plight,—
Knowing we'l a hidden hope was in my foolish fears confessed.
But the river, whether friend or foe, the river was to blame;
Had I fallen in the crowd wherein I sought to make retreat,
It had closed on me unheeding, trampled, left me to my shame,
But it pressed and threw me forward, when the swollen river came
And sucked me in, and drew me drenched and breathless to his feet.
It had claimed me as his tribute; was he not the river king
Standing upright at the stern in all the glory of his state?
I lay trembling as a bird afeard to get upon the wing,
As he stepped into the stream and took me up, a fluttering thing—
Yes, the river had betrayed me to that baptism of fate.

To be only alive in the spring, coldly kissed by the breeze,
When a soul of blind love is astir in the bud and the blade,
When the fountain of sap rises up from the roots of the trees
To their pendulous boughs, is a summons of joy to a maid.
But was never a spring that so gladdened the heart and the eyes
As the spring that is gone, and whose flowers lie cold in the earth;
There was never a season that broke with so sweet a surprise—
That was loosed from the dark hold of death in so sudden a birth.
For the rain and the sadness had fallen of summerless years
On the wood hardly ripened, and leaflets and blossoms, each one
Was as tender and soft as the heart that is nourished on tears
In its season of growth, and as freshly unclosed to the sun.
And I had seen summerless years with the sad seasons flown,
Fatherless, motherless, having to fight for my share,
A poor place in the shadow-crossed world which had not been my own
When the heart of a mother had held me from shadow of care.
And I was abloom with the season when swift by his side
I was borne with the fast sailing clouds in my holiday glee,
And we greeted you river as rolling your silvery tide,
You past us and smiled on our joy in your way to the sea.
The city receding—the tasker and task left behind,
The babble of many exchanged for the deep words of one,
The breath-laden air for the kiss of the wandering wind,
And the hard, counted hours for the joy of a day but begun.
We pass the red roofs, and we look at the clock in the tower;
‘Only eleven,’ he says, ‘of this sweet April day;’
And we gaze on the fair gabled house with the almond in flower,
And the buds of the thorn that are big with the promise of May;
The chestnut whose fingers unclosing have let the white flame
Of the blossom slip through them, the alley of trees, and the two
Who are walking therein, while the birds on their steps linger tame,
And the buds as they pass seem to open and crowd on their view.
And he whispered me softly: ‘Here love is at home, the fond tale
Is disclosed by the glad living creatures in beauty and song,
And our love as the love of this twain shall not falter or fail
For the scorn of the years; they shall touch it and do it no wrong.’
Then the russet and gold of the poplars was caught as with fire
Of a sun that had burst on the world and would never more set,
And straight from the dark grove of ilex there opened a quire
That sung of the love which had barely been spoken as yet.
For the wonder within us was shy, having grown beyond reach
Of the thoughts of our hearts in the days love had been but a dream,
And the joy of it deepened to awe when it first put on speech
And we felt ourselves borne to our doom in the rush of its stream.
He had dared to make free with my heart, and had called by its name
The secret which trembling he drew from its maidenly hold,
And I heard unreproving, filled, thrilled with the joy and sweet shame—
Overborne by the stress of the passion which rendered him bold.
But our love was at April, and opened no further that day;
It was rife as the sap in the immanent leaf, and discreet
As the yet folded blossom that softly is seeking its way
To the full, rounded life which the sun is at work to complete.
So we spoke of the birds that unbosomed their full hearts in song,
Of the gorse on the heath—all the wealth of the summer foreshown—
Of the sweet-scented gums which the toils of the season prolong,—
Still of love and love's labour, but ventured no nearer our own.
Then the fair day was done, but its joy like a great tidal wave
Overflowed the low banks of the days and the nights that were near,
As I sat midst the laughter of work-fellows silent and grave,
And the voice of the task-mistress chiding awakened no fear.
And sometimes my joy would seem present and suddenly rise,
And bear me before it I hardly knew whither or why,
Till, lo, from the window a vision would gladden my eyes—
My love had foreboded aright, that my lover was nigh.

It is good to be young in the spring, but to breathe, but to be,
When the woods are tumultuous with song, the leaf freshly unfurled,
To break into joy as the blossom breaks forth of the tree,
In the on-coming tide which is lightening the heart of the world;
It is good to be young in the spring, but O, rare beyond words
To love and be loved in the season when love is at best,
To pair in the youth of your days and the year with the birds,
As wise as the world, if no wiser—this is to be blest!
O river, that comest from far, you have been, you have seen,
Where the willows are weeping for sorrow that once wept for bliss;
You have past the still cove where the daffodil buds overlean
Your waters in April as bent their own shadows to kiss;
And you know how the shade of your greenery thickens in May,
When the trill of the nightingale shakes down the sweet summer snows
From the boughs of the thorn, and is answered from over the way
By a voice from the heart of the wood where the hyacinth blows.
O bring me, wild waters, the scent of the now buried flowers—
The violets in hiding, whose secret we crushed out and gave
To the murmuring breezes, and with it bring back the dead hours—
The hours that in dying have made of the wide world on grave.

Comes a time when the pulse of the season has risen still higher—
When the crown of the year is of May, but not yet of the rose,
When the trees through a mist of soft leaves seem to gladly respire
The air that is balm, and to drink of the sunshine that glows;
When the lilac still blushes, the lilies lie folded beneath,
When the broom and laburnum are tossing or shedding their gold,
And the hand of the bountiful Giver o'er meadow and heath,
In gorse and in kingcup is scattering riches untold;
When the moist living green of the nethermost boughs of the elm
Rises up as a verdurous breath, and a robe seems to cling
Round the boles of the birch, that show fair through the tremulous film,
As the silvery limbs of a Dryad in vesture of spring
When the larch in its youth, and the king of the forest discrowned
The garlanded age of the thorn, and the succulent weed
Born in yesterday's shower—all things that have root in the ground
Are alive and abloom in the sun, from the oak to the reed;
When the heaven being open above us, while fair at our feet
The pride and the joy of the earth spread a carpet of flowers,
I went forth again with my love the glad season to greet,
And we rode in the triumph of Nature which seemed to be ours.
How brightly you beamed on us, river, as if you took part
In the joy that grew vocal beside you as softly we trod,
And the voice of the love flowing forth from the deep of your heart
Was more full than the nightingale's own, O my young river god!
Yes I see him, I hear him once more, with his presence fulfilled,
His words through the desolate void of my heart seem to ring,
As I, beggared of love and of hope, stand here shaken and thrilled
With the full pulsing life of that high day of affluent spring.
Fill me full with sweet poison, dear river, that mingled your voice
With the words that he said when he loosened my winter of life
As the rivers are loosened in spring, when he bade me rejoice—
His Queen of the May whom the autumn should crown as his wife.
Yes, I hear him, he murmurs, ‘My fair one,’ he calls me his queen—
Of the May, of all Mays, and all months all the blessed year through;
But he calls me his wife that shall be,—and the word is so keen
That it cuts all my life, the before and thereafter, in two.
I, poor with the poorest, with none for my sorrow to care,
More beggared of love's daily need than of silver or gold,
I, who only of life had hard work and hard words for my share,
With no home but the grave, where the heart of my mother lay cold.
I, dropped from the hands of the dead on the floor of the world,
To be lifted again,—all my wrongs in a moment atoned,—
Lifted high beyond sight of the place whence I once had been hurled,
To be taken and dowered with all things, to own and be owned!
O river, they know not—how should they?—the rich and the proud,
Who sit down every day to the feast and make light of the best,
What some hungry, some starving one chosen from out of the crowd
Can bring to the banquet of life of sharp longing and zest.

It was under the greenwood, our seat the flowery sod,
There my secret flowed forth and was mixed with the violets' breath,
There I gave him his name, there first called him my young river god,
There we vowed to be true to each other in life and in death.
Then no tree of the forest, no herb of the garden or field,
Not the thrush or the nightingale's self even—poet of birds—
Was so eager to rush into bloom or melodiously yield
All the rapture repressed, as our love was to flower in words.
It was May-time, within and without us, above and beneath,
It was May with the lark in the sky and its mate on the ground,
It was May in our hearts, and the wonder had broken its sheath
With all blossoming things, and flowed forth as the waters unbound.
But the passionate pause which o'ercame us at whiles as a spell,
That had more than the tenderest words of love's secret to teach;
When he looked in my eyes, and my eyes could not bear it, and fell,
And a touch of the hand held us dumb as despairing of speech.
When your lips met my lips, O beloved, and the mystery first,
The meaning of life became clear in a moment of bliss;
There was love at the heart of the world that had once seemed accurst,
And men bore not their burthens in vain if they bore them for this.
But our kisses were stolen in haste, for the dip of an oar,
Or the sound of a step on the path, of a voice on the green,
Made us start from each other to gaze on the opposite shore,
And to look as if kisses between us could never have been.
Yet once for a moment it seemed that the world had been made
For us two and no other—one moment we came to forget
That a presence was blotting the light from the flickering shade,
Wherein dusk, as the lips of the dead, showed the white violet.
'Twas a voice that awakened us rudely and scattered our dream,
The voice and low laugh of a crone that had power to fling
Defiance in face of our youth, and to chill with the gleam
Of her dull wintry eyes all the sap in the veins of the spring.
Yes, she stood there and faced us, a creature so haggard and bent,
A ruin that seemed of things sad and unholy the haunt;
As I looked, the bright veil of the universe seemed to be rent,
As I heard, the shrill joy of the lark seemed an arrogant vaunt.
Not by time had the beldame been withered alone, she was crushed,
As a scroll that is held of too little account for the fire;
Yet those lips may have haply known kisses, that cheek may have blushed
Ere they shrank from the light in the shame of an insult so dire.
Now they muttered but curses, which each to my ear was a cry,
While her cheek was the map of a country where cross-roads of care
Had been ploughed through a highway of tears ere their fountain was dry,
And the pity of all was the ways seemed to lead to nowhere!
How the palsied hand clutched at the coin that he gave, how her eyes,
As she fingered the treasure, grew keen with a horrible lust!
Does the dross of the earth which our opulent youth can despise—
Its mere dust grow so dear to a soul on its way to the dust?
As a dog at the heels of his tyrant, and hailed on a road
He may never return by, still furtively buries his bone,
So she tremblingly felt in her tatters, and darkly bestowed,
Tied her wealth up from knowledge and use in some corner unknown.
Then she chuckled for joy of her cunning and turned on her way,
And we gazed through the fresh willow shoots on the figure forlorn,
Until nothing was left of the sight that had saddened the May
But a rag that was tainting the air from the boughs of the thorn.
Is love then immortal and not to be quenched with the breath,
Can he strike out the path where the road to all other is dim,
That he bears with decay, and grows bolder in presence of death;
That the jaws of the grave are the gates as of heaven to him?
I know not, but know he soon lifted his head and made light
Of the terrors of time; that we wandered, dear river, with thee,
And we thought that the stream, which was bearing us on in its might,
Was akin to some vast mid-most ocean, as thou to the sea.
Now the stream bears me only, my love, for to love you are lost!
Draws me down to some bottomless deep which will suck out my life;
I, in doubting of thee, doubt of all, and my spirit is tost
As a wave that is forming and breaking in impotent strife.
Lull, dull my sad senses, O river, that break'st on the pier
With false whispers of peace, let me think never-more, let me dream,
O my dream that love reigns over all and my lover is near,
And so turn for a while of the river of fate the cold stream.
Let me dream in my madness some eye, that is other than those
Of the pitiless stars, has an answer to give to my own;
That some heart is awake, some one ear still alive to my woes,
And that love in the breast of a girl lives not wholly alone.

It is June; there comes rest with the rose; the earth's crown has been won;
If the hand of the Giver has taken back ought that he gave,
He has filled up the void with some blossom more dear to the sun;
So we rock all oblivious of doom on the crest of the wave.
Yes I see him before me, my river-god, see him afloat
Where he found me at first; we are carried along with the tide
To the bowers that await us; his oars do but steady the boat,
As enthroned on my cushions I queen it in indolent pride.
So we float with the stream till the hum of the city grows faint,
And we float and we float till the banks of the river are green,
When we glide, with the swans in our wake, where the hanging woods paint
Cool shades on the smooth-flowing water and temper its sheen.
And the king of the troop, with white wings and soft feathers apart,
Overlooking the double of self which he everywhere drew,
Was an image of pride, but more tenderly proud was my heart
When I saw myself fair in those eyes with all heaven in their blue.
No, none other can look as I looked there; my image was first
In the field of his vision—there bides—nor will ever accord
The place to that pallid new comer—that woman accurst!—
Nay, river, I asked of thee poison—not fire and sword!
Soft, whisper me, falsely, befool me again, let me think
You are lapping the bows of the boat as your bosom we cleave;
One more look at my paradise lost ere I finally sink
In the night of my sorrow—O river, one moment's reprieve.
I tremble, I fail, and I lose of the vision my hold;
Come, clasp me, my love, hold me fast from this horror of night;
Make me warm on your heart, or I die in the darkness and cold;
Sun me through with your smile, ere I fade evermore from the light.
We are floating again, we are floating, and sundered a space
I can make up the sum of my wealth. Oh, my love, you are fair
In the stately repose of the strength which makes perfect your grace,
With your broad shadowed brows, and the gold of your youth on your hair.
But how fair and how stately soever, that day as we glide
Up the stream with the swans, between banks that are sweet with the rose,
I seem made for your mate, I am worthy to sit by your side,
I am rich in the beauty that crowns and the grace that bestows,—
In all gifts of the Gods to the woman whereby she makes blest
The desire of her soul; I had gathered this truth from your eyes,
Which the power of my presence to move you at moments confest
In such flashes electric as trouble the midsummer skies.
When I captured the floating swan-feathers and made you a crown,
And you twined me a garland of roses which, when it was done,
You bound me withal, while you trembled yourself like the down,
And I turned from your gaze as a flower that is slain of the sun.
When I sat with my joy heavy-hearted, too richly fulfilled
With the folded delight which the days yet to be should disclose,
And it seemed that through all the enfolding a secret distilled
As the deep central sweetness exhales from the breast of the rose.
So we float and we float all alone, though the river is blithe
With the laughter of children and voices of young men and maids;
And the woods are still vocal, the mower is there with his scythe,
And the scent of the newly-mown hay all the region pervades.
Might we float with the stream and the swans, might we float evermore
In the flush of the rose-time, the youth and the pride of our state,
We two and no other; not pausing or putting to shore
Till we wearied, or death came to help us, to baffle our fate.
Yet our bowers when we landed were welcome; the light filtered soft
Through the green leaves translucent; the speed-well lay cool in the grass;
The talk of the mowers came dulled from the neighbouring croft,
And the steps on the towing-path near seemed discreetly to pass.
And there went as the sound of a hush through the midsummer air,
And a shadow would glance, and the tender boughs let through a bird
That had come in the heat of the noon on his mate unaware,
And the sensitive leaves at the stroke of their hearts would be stirred.
Still no peal rang forth heavy and sweet with the wealth of that hour,
When the spirit of Life seemed to consciously hold in his breath,
Lest a sigh should imperil a leaf of the all-perfect flower,
As if fulness of being had brought with it prescience of death.
If the veiled one, whose presence can make sacramental life's feast,
When its mood is the lightest, had taken me then from your side;
If the heart that was beating too high had but suddenly ceased,
I had lain at your feet as a lily cut off in its pride;
I had died all undimmed by a doubt, in the sheen of my youth,
I had dropped and been reaped as a flower in the path of the wheat,
And gone crowned to my grave as a queen in the rose of your truth,
And been mourned there awhile with salt tears which the years would make sweet.
But to die as I die, overthrown, dispossessed and forlorn,
And be charged as I may be, a spectre unwelcome to stand
Betwixt you and that other with whom you to-day were forsworn,
Thus to die, O my love, that once loved me,-and die by your hand
Is to perish past hope, and be drawn to some foul, tangled deep,
With life's ends all unended and endless for ever to dwell;
To lie cold amid forms of disorder that hinder from sleep,
Or be hustled by chance through the wastes of some latter-day hell;
For I died by your hand in that letter; it did not require
Such urgence of proof that the blow was decreed and must fall;
Ten pages—and written so fairly, and written with fire!
Was that well when a word of your lips had sufficed to it all?
I had never contested your will, if your will was to part,
Neither battled nor yielded with tears as a deer brought to bay,
I had laid all my life in your hand, had made over my heart;
It was easy to win me—more easy to cast me away
And to score out a record so fair with a pen dipped in flame,
When a look of your eyes that was strange or the faintest cold breath
Would have daunted the hope you had kindled, extinguished my claim,
Till the want at my heart should have dealt me more merciful death;—
That was cruel—but no, it was madness; you could not have known
How those charactered devils of fire would grave on my brain
Through the nights that were endless, the nights when they had me alone—
Those ten pages effacing the vows we had whispered in vain.
You are brave; had you met me in face, love, the stroke had been fair;
You would never have marred me or left me dismantled and shorn;
If not crowned with your truth, you had spread out the wealth of my hair
For a winding sheet, knotted and woven, to hide me from scorn.
Had you put out my life on that day, when its light was at full,
And had set me to float to the sea with the turn of the tide,
I had let it alone as you laid it—my brain had been cool,
With no letters of flame to make light of my woe, or deride.
Then that month had been spared me which burnt up the flowery June,
When I sat at my task, as if rooted, and drooped and grew white,
As we toiled in the gaslight, which flared in the face of the moon,
For the bread which should keep us still toiling for others' delight.
I had sucked not so bare then of sweetness, while there I sat bent,
All the hours of my last day of life, till they too seemed to pale,
As a cup which the bees in their quest and requesting have shent,
Till the best of its nectar grows vapid and threatens to fail.
And I then of that terror of silence had likewise been quit—
The silence that fell on my life before death was decreed,
And the stillness had fallen thereafter, where most it is fit:
When the life is gone out of you, peace is the ultimate need.
But you let in upon me those devils, who would not be made
To see that the dead must have rest; and through ages of time
They kept putting foul words in my mouth—yes, they were not afraid—
They dared even to call you a coward, and brand you with crime.
Yet I baffled them! never a lie that they struggled to teach
Found a passage from out of these lips, by an iron will barred—
Ay, forbidden to let in a crumb lest the stream of their speech
Should find issue thereon in despite of my vigilant guard.
We are born to our names, and there are that are sterner than Fate;
We own not so much as are owned of them, body and soul,
Hard creditors, tyrants, nay vampires which nothing can sate
But the best of our blood, which in draining they poison the whole.
Such a vampire had seized on you—you, who were brave to deny
The claim on your life of a name which in sloth had grown old,
Till it came with an army of duties our love to defy,
And you yielded, disarmed love, where only the base had been bold.
You were summoned to suffer, to strip your life bare, so you said,
‘Of the hope that was dearest, for one who was only less dear;’
If your part was to live for him, mine was to die in his stead;
In those pages of fire all the path for us both was made clear.
Yes, my life for the life of your father, who, sick, would have died
At the fall of his fortunes, if lacking a son who would wed
With the wealth which should build them again, only setting aside
The claim of a girl who could urge it no more, being dead.
Well, a life for a life; if, when counting my treasure for loss,
Yielding days that were priceless with love, I had seen but the eyes
Of the Christ who once suffered for men, as was said on the Cross,
And been lifted in heart and in hope to some high paradise,
I had died not so hard; they in asking my life to redeem
The life of another, had made me partaker with Him;
Now men sharing Christ's sorrow and death have no part in his dream,
And his God is as lost to their love as the veiled Cherubim.
Had a king only ruled over spirits, those demons of flame
Who were able to rack and to rend me, to torture, and grieve,
Would have quailed when I fell on my knees, when I called on his name—
But they tremble no longer; the devils have ceased to believe.
Has anyone tasted my sorrow and learnt to endure,
Bear the curse of a Fate that knows neither design nor desert?
But has anyone, tasting my sorrow, had proof of its cure—
Stood the test of the fiery furnace and come out unhurt?
No, the truest of hearts fare the worst—they are hardest to cheat;
We are victims, not martyrs, we burn, and are calcined to stone;
We grow black in the reek, are made bitter where once we were sweet;
Would my soul remain fair, it must look to the river alone.

So the river—yes, the river; I have come to that at last;
The river is my only friend, though changed with all the rest,
Dark and sullen, it has known me in the glory of my past
And has smiled upon me then; for very shame it could not cast
Me forth if I should seek the barren haven of its breast.
Give me shelter, sullen river, hide me out of sight and ken,
Keep your dreams, I have outdreamed them, all your golden visions keep;
Though with festering forms you hold me in some scooped-out, slimy den,
In your loathliest recesses, keep me safe from eyes of men,
And for all the joy I had of you but give me quiet sleep.
No, that may not be awhile; I know that I must pass again
By the ways that I have come, that when the waters enter in,
They will meet my lingering life and drive it backward through the brain;
I shall go to final peace as through a burning lake of pain;—
Who can say but that the devils of that after-time may win?
Soft! the river did not hear them—has no knowledge of my foes,
And it may be if it see no sign and hear no word of me,
It will pass and leave them sleeping, them and all their train of woes,—
And will only waken tenderly the pleasures that it knows,
And so let me take farewell of love ere I have ceased to be!
But the pack of them that came again and found me in the church,
And hunted me from place to place all day, yet never caught,
Till I heard the river call, and fled, and left them in the lurch,
And lay silent in the shadow, while they past me in their search—
No, I think the river never knew that it was me they sought.
How they mocked me, how they scoffed at all, and most of all at him,
As he knelt before the altar with that woman at his side,
Dressed in cobwebs spun in cellars where the spinners' eyes grow dim;
How the devils in their triumph yelled aloud and drowned the hymn,
When they lifted up the cobwebs and his mother kissed the bride.
Hush, the river must not know that I had ever seen her face,
Must not know she came and found me when my torturers had fled;
Hah! for me she had no kiss, but sat aloof in pride of race,
Though I yearned to her—his mother—till she offered me a place
In the service of the living, never noting I was dead.
I had yearned to those cold eyes, because I saw his eyes look through,
And, as out of frozen windows of a prison, gaze at me;
Had they softened with a tear, I think, my tears had fallen too,
And perhaps my heart in melting would have brought my life anew,—
But to put to cruel uses—no! forbear my tears, let be!
It was she who kissed the bride, he dared not touch her in my sight,
For he felt my ghostly presence and my shadow rise between;
But they past me by together, and she has him day and night,
With my shadow growing less and less until it dwindles quite,
Or is swallowed of her substance, and abides with him unseen.
And she will be a growing power and potency, the years—
The treacherous years will take her part and ravish him from me,
And she will make a title out of daily smiles and tears,
And will pass to fuller blessedness through weakness which endears,
And I shall be as one forbid before I cease to be.
O thou blessed among women more than all of woman born!
Be my sister, be my comforter; nay, wherefore cold and proud?
We are bound as in one web of Fate, the garland that was worn
Of thee to-day, but yestereen from off my brows was torn,
And that costly bridal robe of thine must serve me for a shroud.
Be thou high of heart as happy, leave for me a little space
In the silence of his thoughts, that while you pass from change to change,
I may, balmëd with the dead, lie still with dead unchanging face,
Making fragrant all his seasons—be this granted me for grace—
With some magic of the morning that might else for him grow strange.
O my love that loved me truly in the days not long ago,
I am young to perish wholly, let not all of me be lost;
Take me in, and never fear me—nay, I would not work you woe;
Keep for her the cheerful daylight, keep for her the firelight glow,—
Let me wander in the twilight of your thoughts, a harmless ghost.
Let me steal upon your dreams, and make your broken life complete,
Take me in, no mortal maiden, but the spirit o your youth;
I have done with earthly longings, and their memory, bitter sweet,
And would feed you with an essence you should only taste, not eat,
And so keep your soul undying in its tenderness and truth.
I may rise from out the shadow, there is none upon my track;
One might think the world was dead but for the city's ceaseless moan;
Not a foot of man or beast a-near, and for that demon pack,
They have lost and left me utterly—but, hist! they may come back—
What is done between us, river, must be seen by us alone.
You are watching for me, waiting; let me be, my flesh recoils;
What are you that you should sentence me—what evil have I done?
You have ever been my fate; you have and hold me in your toils;—
Yet, O life, I cannot live you, with your fevers and turmoils;
Come and take me, lest it find me at the rising of the sun.
Let me look upon you, river—soh, how deep and still you are!
You will hide me well, for you are dark and secret as the night;
I can see your bosom heave in the reflection of a star,
And it does not show so hard in you, and does not seem so far;
As I drop into the darkness, I shall feel the kiss of light.

Yet the world is all blurred as with tears; I am looking my last;
I can still hear its moan, though the worst of its sorrow is dumb;—
Farewell to the glimmer of lamps that grow pale in the blast,
And the clock that will measure the time, when my times shall be past!—
See, he opens his arms—O my River—God, clasp me, I come!