I love it with a poet's love; we hold
An open-air communion now and then,
Linked to each other by the ends which mould
The shapes of song in rivers and in men—
It struggles seaward as my spirit strives
With tones of music for a sea of lives.
Come, let me cast my idle books away,
And follow it to-day.

This is the early season of the year,
Half spring, half summer, unto poets dear.
Now the hush'd world stands trembling and prepares
To put the summer on like marriage blisses;
Still as a bride whose heart is making prayers,
Who clings a moment to the life she wears,
Looking far backward with a parting glance—
Then loosens that familiar life with kisses,
And takes the bridegroom in a golden, trance.

Run seaward, for I follow!
                                           Let me cross
My garden-threshold ankle-deep in moss.
Sweet stream, your heart is beating and I hear it,
As conscious of its pleasure as a girl's:
O little river whom I love so well,
Is it with something of a human spirit
You twine those lilies in your sedgy curls?
Take up the inner voice we both inherit,
O little river of my love, and tell!

The rain has crawled from yonder mountain-side,
And passing, left its footprints far and wide.
The path I follow winds by cliff and scar,
Purple and dark and trodden as I pass,
Save where the primrose lifts its yellow star
Set like a gem in scanty braids of grass—
The primrose in its crevice damp and dun,
Second to light its censer at the sun!
Dwarf birches show their sodden roots and shake
Their melting jewels on my bending brows,
The mottled mavis pipes among their boughs
For joy of five unborn in yonder brake.
The river, narrow'd to a woody glen,
Leaps trembling o'er a little rocky ledge,
Then broadens forward into calm again
Where the grey moor-hen builds her nest of sedge;
Caught in the dark those willow-trees have made,
Kissing the yellow lilies o'er and o'er,
It flutters twenty feet along the shade,
Halts at the boulder like a thing afraid,
And turns to kiss the lilies yet once more.

Following my fancies by the river's brim,
Fitting to things around me meanings dim,
Such fitful meanings as were never spoken,
Because they flutter in the brain and die,
I hear the brooding silence startle, broken
By distant echoes of the shepherd's cry,
The bleating of the herds on mountains high,
And seasonable sights which leave a token
Of something, which we only feel akin
Between the life without and life within.
The tender azure heaven bends above,
Pencilled with fleecy cloud as white as snow,
Sweetly and calmly does its silence prove
That thought of kindred truer than I know.
There's heaven enough beneath me as I move,
And heaven enough within my heart, to show
Those skies and this small earth unite to give
That second union by which I live!

Those little falls are lurid with the rain
That ere the day is done will come again.
The river falters swoll'n and brown,
Falters, falters, as it nears them,
Shuddering back as if it fears them,
Falters, falters, falters, falters,
Then dizzily rushes down.

But all is calm again, the little river
Smiles on and sings the song it sings for ever.
Here at the curve it passes tilth and farm,
And faintly flowing onward to the mill
It stretches out a little azure arm
To aid the miller, aiding with a will,
And singing, singing still.
Sweet household sounds come sudden on mine ear:
The waggons rumbling in the hoof-plod lanes,
The village clock and trumpet Chanticleer,
The flocks and lowing steers on neighbouring plains,
With shouts of urchins ringing loud and clear;
And lo! a village, breathing breath that curls
In foamy wreaths through ancient sycamores,
Sending a hum of looms through cottage doors.
I stumble on a group of market girls
Barefooted in the deep and dewy grass;
Small urchins rush from sanded kitchen-floors
To stare with mouths and glances as I pass.

But yonder cottage where the woodbine grows,
Half cottage and half inn, a pretty place,
Tempts ramblers with the country cheer it shows;
Entering, I rob the threshold of a rose,
And meet the welcome on a mother's face.
Come, let me sit. The scent of garden flowers
Flits through the casement of the sanded room,
Hitting the sense with thoughts of summer hours
When half the world has burgeon'd into bloom.
Is that the faded picture of our host
Shading the plate of pansies where I sit—
That lean-limb'd stripling straighter than a post,
Clad in a coat that seems a sorry fit,
Staring at nothing like an ill-used ghost?
I drink his health in this his own October,
That bites so sharply on the thirsty tongue;
And here he comes, but not so slim and sober
As in the days when Love and he were young.
"Hostess!" I fill again and pledge the glory
Of that stout angel answering to my call,
Who changed him from the shadow on the wall
Into the rosy tun of sack before me!

Again I follow where the river wanders.
The landscape billows into hills of thyme,
Up to whose purple summits larkspurs climb;
Till in a glen of birchen-trees and boulders
I halt, beneath a heathery mountain ridge
Clothed on with amber cloud from head to shoulders.

I wander on and gain a little bridge,
And watch the angling of a shepherd boy;
Below the little river glimmers by,
Touched with a troubled sense of pain or joy
By some new life at work in earth and sky.
The pastures there steam mist from hidden springs,
Deep-hidden in the marsh the bittern calls,
And yonder swallow oils its ebon wings
While fluttering o'er the little waterfalls,
Below my feet the little budding flower
Thrusts up dark leaves to feel the coming shower:
I'll trust these weather-signs and creep apart
Beneath this crag until the rain depart,
Twill come again and go within an hour.
The moisty wind has died and fallen now,
The air is hot and hushed on flower and tree,
The leaves are troubled into sighs, and see!
There falls a heavy drop upon my brow.
The cloudy standard is above unfurled;
The aspen fingers of the blinded Rain
Feel for the summer eyelids of the world
That she may kiss them open once again.