Sir Lewis Morris: Verses about River

THERE is a ceaseless river,
Which flows down evermore
Into a wailing ocean,
A sea without a shore

Broken by laughing ripple,
Foaming with angry swell,
Sweet music as of heaven,
Deep thunder as of hell.

Gay fleets float down upon it,
And sad wrecks, full of pain :
But all alike it hurries
To that unchanging main.

Sometimes 'tis foul and troubled,
And sometimes clear and pure;
But still the river flows, and still
The dull sea doth endure.

And thus 'twill flow for ever,
Till time shall cease to be :
O weary, weary river,
O bitter, barren sea.

THE silent surfaces sleep
With a sullen viscous flow,
And scarce in the squalid deep
Swing the dead weeds to and fro,
And no living thing is there to swim or creep
In the sunless gulfs below.

And beneath are the ooze and the slime,
Where the corpse lies as it fell,
The hidden secrets of crime
Which no living tongue shall tell,
The shameful story of time,
The old, old burden of hell.

All the grasses upon the bank
Are bitter with scurf and drift,
And the reeds are withered and dank ;
And sometimes, when the smoke clouds shift,
You may see the tall shafts in a hideous rank
Their sulphurous fumes uplift.

From the black blot up the stream
The funeral barges glide,
And the waves part as in a dream,
From broad bow and sunken side ;
And 'tis 'greed, greed!' hisses from coal and from steam,
Foul freightage and turbid tide,

Like the life of a slumb'ring soul
Grown dull in content and health,
Whose dark depths lazily roll,
Whose still currents creep by stealth.
Nor sorrow nor yearning comes to control
The monotonous tide of wealth.

Fair or foul, in life as in death,
One blight and corruption o'er all,
Blow on them, great wind, with thy breath,
Fall, blinding water-floods, fall,
Till the dead life below awakeneth,
And deep unto deep doth call !

BRIGHT with unnumbered laughters, and swollen by a thousand tears,
Rushes along, through upland and lowland, the river of life ;
Sometimes foaming and broken, and sometimes silent and slumbrous,
Sometimes down rocky glens, and sometimes through flowery plains.
Sometimes the mountains draw near, and the black depths swirl at their bases,
Sometimes the limitless meads fade on the verge of the sky,
Sometimes the forests stand round, and the great trees cast mystical shadows,
Sometimes the golden wheat waves, and girls fill their pitchers and sing.

Always the same strange flow, through changes and chances unchanging,
Always—in youth and in age, in calm and in tempest the same—
Whether it sparkle transparent and give back the blue like a mirror,
Or sweep on turbid with flood, or black with the garbage of towns—
Whether the silvery scale of the minnow flash on the pebbles,
Or whether the poisonous ooze cling like a shroud round the dead—
Whether it struggle through shoals of white blooms and feathery grasses,
Or bear on its bosom the hulls of oceantost navies—the same.

Flow on, O mystical river, flow on through desert and city ;
Broken or smooth, flow onward into the Infinite sea.
Who knows what urges thee on, what dark laws and cosmical forces
Stain thee or keep thee pure, and bring thee at last to thy goal ?
What is the cause of thy rest or unrest, of thy foulness or pureness ?
What is the secret of life, or the painful riddle of death ?
Why is it better to be than to cease, to flow on than to stagnate ?
Why is the river-stream sweet, while the sea is as bitter as gall ?

Surely we know not at all, but the cycle of Being is eternal,
Life is eternal as death, tears are eternal as joy.
As the stream flowed, it will flow; though 'tis sweet, yet the sea will be bitter :
Foul it with filth, yet the deltas grow green and the ocean is clear.
Always the sun and the winds will strike its broad surface and gather
Some purer drops from its depths, to float in the clouds of the sky;—
Soon these shall fall once again, and replenish the full-flowing river.
Roll round then, O mystical cycle ! flow onward, ineffable stream !