Rivers

    Rivers I have seen which were beautiful,
    Slow rivers winding in the flat fens,
    With bands of reeds like thronged green swords
        Guarding the mirrored sky;
    And streams down-tumbling from the chalk hills
    To valleys of meadows and watercress-beds,
    And bridges whereunder, dark weed-coloured shadows,
        Trout flit or lie.

    I know those rivers that peacefully glide
    Past old towers and shaven gardens,
    Where mottled walls rise from the water
        And mills all streaked with flour;
    And rivers with wharves and rusty shipping,
    That flow with a stately tidal motion
    Towards their destined estuaries
        Full of the pride of power;

    Noble great rivers, Thames and Severn,
    Tweed with his gateway of many grey arches,
    Clyde, dying at sunset westward
        In a sea as red as blood;
    Rhine and his hills in close procession,
    Placid Elbe, Seine slaty and swirling,
    And Isar, son of the Alpine snows,
        A furious turquoise flood.

    All these I have known, and with slow eyes
    I have walked on their shores and watched them,
    And softened to their beauty and loved them
        Wherever my feet have been;
    And a hundred others also
    Whose names long since grew into me,
    That, dreaming in light or darkness,
        I have seen, though I have not seen.

    Those rivers of thought: cold Ebro,
    And blue racing Guadiana,
    Passing white houses, high-balconied,
        That ache in a sun-baked land,
    Congo, and Nile and Colorado,
    Niger, Indus, Zambesi,
    And the Yellow River, and the Oxus,
        And the river that dies in sand.

    What splendours are theirs, what continents,
    What tribes of men, what basking plains,
    Forests and lion-hided deserts,
        Marshes, ravines and falls:
    All hues and shapes and tempers
    Wandering they take as they wander
    From those far springs that endlessly
        The far sea calls.

    O in reverie I know the Volga
    That turns his back upon Europe,
    And the two great cities on his banks,
        Novgorod and Astrakhan;
    Where the world is a few soft colours,
    And under the dove-like evening
    The boatmen chant ancient songs,
        The tenderest known to man.

    And the holy river Ganges,
    His fretted cities veiled in moonlight,
    Arches and buttresses silver-shadowy
        In the high moon,
    And palms grouped in the moonlight
    And fanes girdled with cypresses,
    Their domes of marble softly shining
        To the high silver moon.

    And that aged Brahmapootra
    Who beyond the white Himalayas
    Passes many a lamassery
        On rocks forlorn and frore,
    A block of gaunt grey stone walls
    With rows of little barred windows,
    Where shrivelled young monks in yellow silk
        Are hidden for evermore....

    But O that great river, the Amazon,
    I have sailed up its gulf with eyelids closed,
    And the yellow waters tumbled round,
        And all was rimmed with sky,
    Till the banks drew in, and the trees' heads,
    And the lines of green grew higher
    And I breathed deep, and there above me
        The forest wall stood high.

    Those forest walls of the Amazon
    Are level under the blazing blue
    And yield no sound save the whistles and shrieks
        Of the swarming bright macaws;
    And under their lowest drooping boughs
    Mud-banks torpidly bubble,
    And the water drifts, and logs in the water
        Drift and twist and pause.

    And everywhere, tacitly joining,
    Float noiseless tributaries,
    Tall avenues paved with water:
        And as I silent fly
    The vegetation like a painted scene,
    Spars and spikes and monstrous fans
    And ferns from hairy sheaths up-springing,
        Evenly passes by.

    And stealthier stagnant channels
    Under low niches of drooping leaves
    Coil into deep recesses:
        And there have I entered, there
    To heavy, hot, dense, dim places
    Where creepers climb and sweat and climb,
    And the drip and splash of oozing water
        Loads the stifling air.

    Rotting scrofulous steaming trunks,
    Great horned emerald beetles crawling,
    Ants and huge slow butterflies
        That had strayed and lost the sun;
    Ah, sick I have swooned as the air thickened
    To a pallid brown ecliptic glow,
    And on the forest, fallen with languor,
        Thunder has begun.

    Thunder in the dun dusk, thunder
    Rolling and battering and cracking,
    The caverns shudder with a terrible glare
        Again and again and again,
    Till the land bows in the darkness,
    Utterly lost and defenceless,
    Smitten and blinded and overwhelmed
        By the crashing rods of rain.

    And then in the forests of the Amazon,
    When the rain has ended, and silence come,
    What dark luxuriance unfolds
        From behind the night's drawn bars:
    The wreathing odours of a thousand trees
    And the flowers' faint gleaming presences,
    And over the clearings and the still waters
        Soft indigo and hanging stars.

        *    *    *    *    *

    O many and many are rivers,
    And beautiful are all rivers,
    And lovely is water everywhere
        That leaps or glides or stays;
    Yet by starlight, moonlight, or sunlight,
    Long, long though they look, these wandering eyes,
    Even on the fairest waters of dream,
        Never untroubled gaze.

    For whatever stream I stand by,
    And whatever river I dream of,
    There is something still in the back of my mind
        From very far away;
    There is something I saw and see not,
    A country full of rivers
    That stirs in my heart and speaks to me
        More sure, more dear than they.

    And always I ask and wonder
    (Though often I do not know it):
    Why does this water not smell like water?
        Where is the moss that grew
    Wet and dry on the slabs of granite
    And the round stones in clear brown water?
    And a pale film rises before them
        Of the rivers that first I knew.

    Though famous are the rivers of the great world,
    Though my heart from those alien waters drinks
    Delight however pure from their loveliness,
        And awe however deep,
    Would I wish for a moment the miracle
    That those waters should come to Chagford,
    Or gather and swell in Tavy Cleave
        Where the stones cling to the steep?

    No, even were they Ganges and Amazon
    In all their great might and majesty,
    League upon league of wonders,
        I would lose them all, and more,
    For a light chiming of small bells,
    A twisting flash in the granite,
    The tiny thread of a pixie waterfall
        That lives by Vixen Tor.

    Those rivers in that lost country,
    They were brown as a clear brown bead is,
    Or red with the earth that rain washed down,
        Or white with china-clay;
    And some tossed foaming over boulders,
    And some curved mild and tranquil,
    In wooded vales securely set
        Under the fond warm day.

    Okement and Erme and Avon,
    Exe and his ruffled shallows,
    I could cry as I think of those rivers
        That knew my morning dreams;
    The weir by Tavistock at evening
    When the circling woods were purple,
    And the Lowman in spring with the lent-lilies,
        And the little moorland streams.

    For many a hillside streamlet
    There falls with a broken tinkle,
    Falling and dying, falling and dying.
        In little cascades and pools,
    Where the world is furze and heather
    And flashing plovers and fixed larks,
    And an empty sky, whitish blue,
        That small world rules.

    There, there, where the high waste bog-lands
    And the drooping slopes and the spreading valleys,
    The orchards and the cattle-sprinkled pastures
        Those travelling musics fill,
    There is my lost Abana,
    And there is my nameless Pharphar
    That mixed with my heart when I was a boy,
        And time stood still.

    And I say I will go there and die there:
    But I do not go there, and sometimes
    I think that the train could not carry me there,
        And it's possible, maybe,
    That it's farther than Asia or Africa,
    Or any voyager's harbour,
    Farther, farther, beyond recall....
        O even in memory!