ON these fair meads, through half a summer day Beside the blue-eyed river-deeps I lie, There comes no sound to chase my dreams away, Nor veil to hide the clear reflected sky, The low hills smile around on either hand, And up the vale the solemn mountains stand. No change for half a changeful century, Fair river, hast thou known, since I, a boy, Would haste of summer noons to plunge in thee, Snatching unmarked a dear forbidden joy; Nor shall a thousand centuries passing trace One wrinkle on thy smooth unageing face. Sweet wandering Towy, sinuous, silvery, Glide on by town and tower, unchanging glide, Pursue thy path of beauty to the sea, Till thy flow weds the salt inrushing tide. Thus rolled of old thy undiscovered flood, When the new world was born in pain and blood. Within thy depths, ere man had come to birth, Dread mailed forms with gory jaws would lurk, The ravening monstrous shapes which swayed the earth, Ere Nature framed her last consummate work; Thou sawest within thy ooze huge Saurians lie, And wide-winged spoilers hurtling thro' the sky. And then for age on age, when Man arose, The gibbering savage mirrored in thy deep; Red wars, oppressions, hatreds, countless woes, Rude hearts that broke, while Mercy seemed asleep, While thou, thro' those dim generations gone Unchanged, unruffled, flow'dst serenely on. And then thro' all our fateful history, Long centuries of war and cruel strife: Our Wales o'erborne, our Britain free and great; Our old race rising with renascent life; -- Still from thy cold hill-fountains didst thou come To seek as we the Deep which is our home. Men come, men pass, but thou flow'st seaward still, Brute Nature, thou immortal art alone! The sea, the stream, the plain, the heavenward hill Built high with ramparts of eternal stone; We who have life and breath, we faint, we die, Ye only view unmoved the unchanging sky. You towns and towers shall fall; the land lie bare Or choked with forests dense; and on thy shore The flocks, the herds, the bathers come no more, None there shall be to mark that thou art fair. Only the lone hills shall encompass thee, Thy comrades blind and dumb while Time shall be. Thou shalt glide still, fair stream, uncaring on, Till sea shall be no more, nor earth nor sky, Till all the hapless race of men be gone, And some dread fire shall burn thy fountains dry. Thou in thy changing flow unchanging art, As is the unchanging changeful human heart. Glide on, O silent stream: I would a tongue Were thine, to chant the mysteries of Time! By one weak voice thou shalt not pass unsung, Glide to Life's sea, continual, sublime. Thou shalt not pass away unrhymed so long As men have ears to hear a humble song. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NAMING FOR LOVE by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE FAT LADY by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE SAVING WAY by HAYDEN CARRUTH WHEN I WROTE A LITTLE by HAYDEN CARRUTH TRANSLUCENT FINGERS by MALCOLM COWLEY LOST ILLUSIONS by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON |