The Waterfall
The song of the waterDoomed ever to roam,A beautiful exile,Afar from its home.
The cliffs on the mountain,The grand and the gray,They took the bright creatureAnd hurled it away!
I heard the wild downfall,And knew it must spillA passionate heart outAll over the hill.
Oh! was it a daughterOf sorrow and sin,That they threw it so madlyDown into the lynn?
. . .
And listen, my Sister,For this is the songThe Waterfall taught meThe ridges among:—
“Oh where are the shadowsSo cool and so sweetAnd the rocks,” saith the water,“With the moss on their feet?
“Oh, where are my playmatesThe wind and the flowers—The golden and purple—Of honey-sweet bowers,
“Mine eyes have been blindedBecause of the sun;And moaning and moaningI listlessly run.
“These hills are so flinty!—Ah! tell me, dark Earth,What valley leads back toThe place of my birth?—
“What valley leads up toThe haunts where a childOf the caverns I sported,The free and the wild?
“There lift me,”—it crieth,“I faint from the heat;With a sob for the shadowsSo cool and so sweet.”
Ye rocks, that look overWith never a tear,I yearn for one half ofThe wasted love here!
My sister so wistful,You know I believe,Like a child for the mountainsThis water doth grieve.
Ah! you with the blue eyesAnd golden-brown hair,Come closer and closerAnd truly declare:—
Supposing a darlingOnce happened to sin,In a passionate space,Would you carry her in—
If your fathers and mothers,The grand and the gray,Had taken the weak oneAnd hurled her away?