Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/598

O what wild leaps through many a fettered pass,
Through knotted ambuscade of root and rock,
How white the plunge, how dark the cloven pool!
Then to rich meadow-grass.
And pastures fed by tinkling herd and flock,
'Till the wide stream receives its waters cool.

Again I long for lakes that lie between
High mountains, fringed about with virgin firs,
Where hand of man has never rudely been.
Nor plashing wheel the limpid water stirs;
There let us twain begin the world again
Like those of old—while tree, and trout, and deer,
Unto their kindred beings draw our own,
Till more than haunts of men,
Than place and pelf, more welcome these appear,
And better worth sheer life than we had known.

Thither, ay, thither flee, O dearest friend,
From walls wherein we grow so wan and old!
The liberal Earth will still her lovers lend
Water of life and storied sands of gold;
Though of her perfect form thou hast secured
Thy will, some charm shall aye thine hold defy,
And day by day thy passion yet shall grow.
Even as a bridegroom, lured
By the unravished secret of her eye.
Reads the bride's soul, yet never all can know.

And when from her embrace again thou'rt torn,
(Though well for her the world were thrown away!)
At thine old tasks thou'lt not be quite forlorn.
Remembering where is peace; and thou shalt say,
"I know where beauty has not felt the curse—
Where, though I age, all round me is so young
That in its youth my soul's youth mirrored seems;
Yes, in their rippling verse,
For all our toil, they have not falsely sung
Who said there still was rest beyond our dreams."

Edmund Clarence Stedman.