Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/291

 THE ASS ABET BROOK' A AD RIVER 28 1

Soon shalt thou hear the surges roar

Where the great billows lash the shore ;

There Neptune waits, and with delight

Sees his descendants heave in sight;

Alas, thou dost not know his face,

The kingly grandsire of thy race !

He was the father of the fountain

That first begat thee on the mountain.

'Tis done ; old Newbury's sandbars crossed,

Soon shall the ship-lined shore be lost.

Farewell ! The old sea king claims thy charms ; •

Thou'rt clasped in thy great grandsire 's arms.

Lost for a while, thou shalt not perish ;

Ocean's care thy life shall cherish ;

And, though thou seem like one entombed,

Not to dissolution doomed,

But exhaled, and soaring high.

Thou shalt mount the azure sky,

And, to life eternal fated,

O'er and o'er shalt be created.

Sometimes in fierce torrents pouring.

When the winds and waves are roaring.

Thou, 'midst thunders bellowing loud,

Shalt leap in lightnings from the cloud.

Then in gentle showers of rain,

Softly shalt descend again,

To refresh the thirsty earth,

And bring the buried flowers to birth.

Happy river ! Well in thee May imagination see. Mirrored, mortal destiny. In alternate peace and strife, Floweth thus the stream of life ;

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