Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A PSALM OF THE WATERS, by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL Poet's Biography First Line: Lo! This is a psalm of the waters Last Line: Cries, enter, and share with thy servant! Subject(s): Nature; Sea; Water; Ocean | ||||||||
LO! this is a psalm of the waters, The wavering, wandering waters: With languages learned in the forest, With secrets of earth's lonely caverns, The mystical waters go by me On errands of love and of beauty, On embassies friendly and gentle, With shimmer of brown and of silver. In pools of dark quiet they ponder, Where the birch, and the elm, and the maple Are dreams in the soul of their stillness. In eddying spirals they loiter, For touch of the fern-plumes they linger, Caress the red mesh of the pine-roots, And quench the strong thirst of the leafage That high overhead with its shadows Requites the soft touch of their giving Like him whose supreme benediction Make glad for love's service instinctive The heart of the Syrian woman. O company, stately and gracious, That wait the sad axe on the hillside! My kinsmen since far in the ages, We tossed, you and I, as dull atoms, The sport of the wind and the water. We are as a greater has made us, You less and I more; yet forever The less is the giver, and thankful, The guest of your quivering shadows, I welcome the counselling voices That haunt the dim aisles of the forest. Lo, this is a psalm of the waters That wake in us yearnings prophetic, That cry in the wilderness lonely With meanings for none but the tender. I hear in the rapids below me Gay voices of little ones playing, And echoes of boisterous laughter From grim walls of resonant granite. 'T is goneit is herethis wild music! Untamed by the ages, as gladsome As when, from the hands of their Maker, In wild unrestraint the swift waters Leapt forth to the bountiful making Of brook and of river and ocean. I linger, I wonder, I listen. Alas! is it I who interpret The cry of the masterful north wind, The hum of the rain in the hemlock, As chorals of joy or of sadness, To match the mere moods of my being? Alas for the doubt and the wonder! Alas for the strange incompleteness That limits with boundaries solemn The questioning soul! Yet forever I know that these choristers ancient Have touch of my heart; and alas, too, That never was love in its fulness Told all the great soul of its loving! I know, too, the years, that remorseless Have hurt me with sorrow, bring ever More near for my help the quick-healing, The infinite comfort of nature; For surely the childhood that enters This heaven of wood and of water Is won with gray hairs, in the nearing That home ever open to childhood. And you, you my brothers, who suffer In serfdom of labor and sorrow, What gain have your wounds, that forever Man bridges with semblance of knowledge The depths he can never illumine? Or binds for his service the lightning, Or prisons the steam of the waters? What help has it brought to the weeper? How lessened the toil of the weary? Alas! since at evening, deserted, Job sat in his desolate anguish, The world has grown wise; but the mourner Still weeps and will weep; and what helping He hath from his God or his fellow Eludes the grave sentinel reason, Steals in at the heart's lowly portal, And helps, but will never be questioned. Yea, then, let us take what these give us, And ask not to know why the murmur Of winds in the pine-tree has power To comfort the hurt of life's battle, To help when our dearest are helpless. Lo, here stands the mother. She speaketh As when at his tent door the Arab Calls, Welcome! in language we know not. Cries, Enter, and share with thy servant! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HALL OF OCEAN LIFE by JOHN HOLLANDER JULY FOURTH BY THE OCEAN by ROBINSON JEFFERS BOATS IN A FOG by ROBINSON JEFFERS CONTINENT'S END by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE FIGUREHEAD by LEONIE ADAMS A DECANTER OF MADEIRA, AGED 86, TO GEORGE BANCROFT, AGED 86 by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL HOW THE CUMBERLAND WENT DOWN [MARCH 8, 1862] by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL |
|