Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/286

 2/6 CONSOLA TIONS OF SOLITUDE

Flanked with elms on either side.

There, circling slow round islands green,

Fixed their foamy tracks between,

Poured through channels three, the torrent

Rushes in a triple current :

One checked when, shut across at night,

The sluicegate bars the water's flight ;

One almost dead, save when it drains

The vernal snows and autumn rains ;

While through the third the full stream gushes,

And to its steep plunge boldly rushes.

Here, as the torrent wildly tears

Down its rocky flight of stairs.

Low on either margin bending.

Drooping elms, their dark boughs blending,

Lock their long arms the gorge across,

And, as the breeze-fanned branches toss.

The green leaves fluttering to and fro

But half conceal the surge below.

Whiter than the drifted snow ;

While the pale mists, all silvery gray,

Brood o'er the gulf of boiling spray.

��Sweeter, on some still night in June,

When full-grown leaves half hide the moon,

And every star his watch doth keep.

And all the house is wrapped in sleep,

To view without the cheerful light.

And see the ripples glancing bright.

When the dripping wheel hangs still

In the crazy old gristmill,

Where, trickling 'mongst the mouldering beams,

The flood sinks in a hundred streams ;

While far away the screech-owl shrill

Cries from the orchard 'neath the hill,

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