IV.

INLAND WATERS: HIGHLANDS.

THE VALLEY BROOK.

FRESH from the fountains of the wood
A rivulet of the valley came,
And glided on for many a rood,

Flushed with the morning's ruddy flame.

The air was fresh and soft and sweet;
The slopes in spring's new verdure lay,
And wet with dew-drops at my feet
Bloomed the young violets of May.

No sound of busy life was heard
Amid those pastures lone and still,
Save the faint chirp of early bird,
Or bleat of flocks along the hill.

I traced that rivulet's winding way;
New scenes of beauty opened round,
Where meads of brighter verdure lay,
And lovelier blossoms tinged the ground.

"Ah, happy valley stream!" I said,

"Calm glides thy wave amid the flowers, Whose fragrance round thy path is shed Through all the joyous summer hours.

"O, could my years, like thine, be passed In some remote and silent glen,

Where I could dwell and sleep at last,

Far from the bustling haunts of men!"

But what new echoes greet my ear?
The village school-boy's merry call;
And mid the village hum I hear
The murmur of the waterfall.

I looked; the widening veil betrayed
A pool that shone like burnished steel,
Where that bright valley stream was stayed
To turn the miller's ponderous wheel.

Ah! why should I, I thought with shame,
Sigh for a life of solitude,

When even this stream without a name

Is laboring for the common good.

No longer let me shun my part
Amid the busy scenes of life,

But with a warm and generous heart
Press onward in the glorious strife.

JOHN HOWARD BRYANT.

I COME from haunts of coot and hern:

I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel

With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots:
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows;

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

THE SHADED WATER.

WHEN that my mood is sad, and in the noise
And bustle of the crowd I feel rebuke,
I turn my footsteps from its hollow joys
And sit me down beside this little brook;

The waters have a music to mine ear
It glads me much to hear.

It is a quiet glen, as you may see,

Shut in from all intrusion by the trees, That spread their giant branches, broad and free, The silent growth of many centuries; And make a hallowed time for hapless moods, A sabbath of the woods.

Few know its quiet shelter,-none, like me,
Do seek it out with such a fond desire,
Poring in idlesse mood on flower and tree,

And listening as the voiceless leaves respire,— When the far-travelling breeze, done wandering, Rests here his weary wing.

And all the day, with fancies ever new,
And sweet companions from their boundless
store,

Of merry elves bespangled all with dew,
Fantastic creatures of the old-time lore,
Watching their wild but unobtrusive play,
I fling the hours away.

A gracious couch-the root of an old oak
Whose branches yield it moss and canopy-
Is mine, and, so it be from woodman's stroke
Secure, shall never be resigned by me;
It hangs above the stream that idly flies,
Heedless of any eyes.

There, with eye sometimes shut, but upward bent,
Sweetly I muse through many a quiet hour,