Memories of Waters

Oh, hue of the Mediterranean sea,
From thy sapphire cradle flash back on me!
Thine is the bluest life that clings
To the weary earth; bright central springs
Bubble up with thine azure, and never fail,
Though the great dome above thee curve cloudy and pale;

When the sunset lingers by Capri’s side
And throws across it a golden fleece,
Thou swellest along in bluest pride,
Stretching on, on, on, to beautiful Greece;
And siren voices drip with the oar;
“Deeper, bend deeper, to learn our lore,
The violet’s secret grows not on the shore.”

And thou, O Como, O purple one,
Did I not watch thee when day was done,
With cheek bent sideway and half-closed eyes,
That wooed from thy beauty a fresh surprise,
As a great broad curtain, dropping down
From the sweet horizon’s ample crown.

A Tyrian curtain, whose edges were wrought
With villas and gardens, and all that thought
Can find most lovely in dwellings of men,
Deep fringes of vineyards all round thee, and then
A dream of great snow-peaks throned over all⁠—
Thy purple is worthy those kings so tall.

  In the hills of Scotland, you come upon
Strange waterfalls, that the light of the sun
Glances away from through birches thin;
They fall with a slow and hollow din
Into dark, still pools where you look down deep
To see the black surface; no Lorelei there
Sits singing and combing her golden hair;
But Bunyan’s visions across you creep,
With a haunting feeling of one who came,
Her heart all trembling and stung with shame,
And, bending down to the pool’s black stir,
Saw Giant Despair looking up at her,
And heard him call from the hollow din
Till she, too ready, sank sighing in.

  Pour down, O Trenton, thy amber screen
That the pool’s dim surface no more be seen!
Gay reveller, tossing away thy wine,
Thy golden sherry, whose hue divine
Was never sphered in the clustering vine;
’Tis Autumn who feeds thee; her banners she flings
Across thy full sources, and shakes in thy springs
Her whole wealth of colors, leaves orange and red,
Green, purple and mottled, an emperor’s bed
For thy waters to dream on; and when they awake,
Into flashes of gold and of amber they break:
Oh, type of glad youth, forever be hung
With garlands of faces all rosy and young!