A mile across the level land

(A pool is set with willows),
You toss a cone of restless sand,
And leap in tiny billows.

So cool and calm, from hidden springs,
Out of the dark that bound you,
You join a hundred living things,
Sweet sights, sweet scents around you.

You ripple on 'neath summer skies,
With grassy banks to guide you,
Where to and fro swift laughter flies
Of boys that play beside you.
And all at once, before you know,
Beneath the bridge you shiver,
You thread the stately pool, and lo!
You topple in the river.

By weir and lock, by bridge and mill,
You roll and roar and rumble,
And fouler things and fouler still
Within your eddies tumble.
And soon beneath a smoky pall
The city hums about you,
And churned by iron wheels you fall
In tides that toss and flout you.

Then waking after fevered days,
You see, beyond the shipping,

The shadowy headland through the haze,
The red buoy dipping, dipping;

The air intoxicates like wine,
And in the merry weather,

The flying sail, the hissing brine
Keep carnival together.

(B 838)

193

16

Oh, in that larger place, amid

The ecstasy of motion,

When you are free and fearless, hid

Within the leaping ocean,

When fond constraint to freedom yields,
With all the world before you,
Forget not the familiar fields,

The quiet source that bore you.

O Chalvey stream, dear Chalvey stream,
Flow onward unabated,

What though to careless eyes you seem
A little overrated.

I'm not ashamed to call you friend,

To own our fond relations,

Like all things mortal you depend

On your associations.

A. C. Benson.

S

Two Rivers

AYS Tweed to Till

"What gars ye rin sae still? "
Says Till to Tweed-

Though ye rin with speed
And I rin slaw,

For ae man that ye droon
I droon twa".

Anon.

Dartside

CANNOT tell what you say, green leaves,
I cannot tell what you say:

But I know that there is a spirit in you,
And a word in you this day.

I cannot tell what you say, rosy rocks,
I cannot tell what you say:

But I know that there is a spirit in you,
And a word in you this day.

I cannot tell what you say, brown streams,
I cannot tell what you say:

But I know that in you too a spirit doth live,
And a word doth speak this day.

"Oh green is the colour of faith and truth, And rose the colour of love and youth,

And brown of the fruitful clay.

Sweet Earth is faithful, and fruitful, and young,
And her bridal day shall come ere long,

And

you shall know what the rocks and the streams And the whispering woodlands say."

Charles Kingsley.

Lynmouth

HAVE brought her I love to this sweet place,
Far away from the world of men and strife,
That I may talk to her a charmed space,
And make a long rich memory in my life.

Around my love and me the brooding hills,
Full of delicious murmurs, rise on high,

Closing upon this spot the summer fills,

And over which there rules the summer sky.

Behind us on the shore down there, the sea
Roars roughly, like a fierce pursuing hound;
But all this hour is calm for her and me;

And now another hill shuts out the sound.

And now we breathe the odours of the glen,
And round about us are enchanted things;
The bird that hath blithe speech unknown to men,
The river keen that hath a voice and sings.

The tree that dwells with one ecstatic thought,
Wider and fairer growing year by year,

The flower that flowereth and knoweth nought,
The bee that scents the flower and draweth near.

Our path is here, the rocky winding ledge

That sheer o'erhangs the rapid shouting stream;
Now dips down smoothly to the quiet edge,
Where restful waters lie as in a dream.

The green exuberant branches overhead
Sport with the golden magic of the sun,
Here quite shut out, here like rare jewels shed
To fright the glittering lizards as they run.

And wonderful are all those mossy floors

Spread out beneath us in some pathless place, Where the sun only reaches and outpours

His smile, where never a foot hath left a trace.

And there are perfect nooks that have been made

By the long growing tree, through some chance turn Its trunk took; since transformed with scent and shade, And filled with all the glory of the fern.

And tender-tinted wood flowers are seen,

Clear starry blooms and bells of pensive blue, That lead their delicate lives there in the green— What were the world if it should lose their hue?

Even o'er the rough out-jutting stone that blocks
The narrow way some cunning hand hath strewn
The moss in rich adornment, and the rocks

Down there seem written thick with many a rune.

And here, upon that stone, we rest awhile,
For we can see the lovely river's fall,
And wild and sweet the place is to beguile
My love, and keep her till I tell her all.

Arthur O'Shaughnessy.

On Exmoor

HERE the pale road gleams like a riband through the heather,

W

By the dust edged white as a line of frozen foam,

While chance has gathered groups of two or three together,

O'er the great brown vista we are riding home.

In a purple shadow are the lower summits hooded,
And the dusk goes down upon each solitary combe,
Where the vague, dark banks of a river, barely wooded,
Are the curlew's haunt, as it cries amid the gloom.

Oh land that I love! as a woman's, pure and tender,
Is thy grave, sweet gaze for the hearts that come and go,
And wreathed in the light of her spiritual splendour
Are thy bare brows gleaming in the sunset glow.