Bright burn, that flings itself or flows
Among the blooming heather,
Here let me for a space repose
While we discourse together.
Your converse, be it grave or gay,
Flows freshly from its fountain;
Your style in some sweet wordless way
Still savours of the mountain.
Below I'll listen by and bye
To petty care and ailment
Of fellow men whose style is dry,
And sorely needs curtailment,
Where in our Inn we day by day
Effect our dull exchanges
Of speech that in our Island way
The speakers still estranges.
But for the nonce I, to be brief,
Am longing at this season,
For change, for solace, and relief,
To hear a word of reason;
And though your answers should be nought,
My questions over-tasking,
A welcome stir of deeper thought
Is felt but in the asking.
Are you through every change the same,
Or do you only seem it?
Am I myself in more than name,
Or do I only dream it?
Nay, at the outset, both are dumb,
You careless, I unknowing,
We neither guess from whence we come,
Or whither we are going;
Still less if what we seem to be
We are in vital union,
Or but as forces that agree
To travel in communion.
You weave some fable bright as day
When bright the sun is shining,
And fall when trouble bars your way
To musical repining;
And still you are but what you are
By grace of those diurnal
And fleeting shows which foul or fair
Are still to you external.
Though should I chance this way again,
Your voice would give me greeting,
Would aught that now you are remain
At any future meeting!
No, not so much as one bright bead
That settles round my finger;
As well beseech the bursting seed
Upon its course to linger;
And I, what more were left of me?
The state from which I borrow
Some threads which seem to bind, will be
But memory to-morrow.
And still these facts are hard to learn,
My faith is still persistent;
You'd be to me the self-same burn,
I should be still existent;
And sure I am that I shall find,
From this day forth for ever
Your image from my mortal mind
It will be hard to sever;
And thus I hope some vaster fount
Of life, some eye all-seeing
Will hold me of the like account,
And keep me still in being.
Now fair befall you, little stream!
To-day among the heather
Your song is bright as is the beam,
And breezy as the weather;
My time is up, but I shall go
The lighter for this season
Of interchange, and overflow,—
Of reason or unreason.