Strong and free, strong and free, Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again, Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child. Charles Kingsley [1819-1875] I COME from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, By thirty hills I hurry down, Till last by Philip's farm I flow I chatter over stony ways, With many a curve my banks I fret With willow-weed and mallow. The Brook's Song I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river, I wind about, and in and out, And here and there a foamy flake With many a silvery water-break And draw them all along, and flow To join the brimming river, T For men may come and men may go, I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, I murmur under moon and stars I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses; And out again I curve and flow For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever 1417 Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892] Which slopes to the western gleams: She went, ever singing, In murmurs as soft as sleep; The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep. Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, 1 With his trident the mountains strook, And opened a chasm In the rocks; with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It unsealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder Did rend in sunder The bars of the springs below: Of the River-god were Seen through the torrent's sweep, Of the fleet nymph's flight Arethusa "Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And bid the deep hide me! For he grasps me now by the hair!" The loud Ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended, Her billows, unblended Like a gloomy stain On the emerald main, Alpheus rushed behind, As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearlèd thrones; Through the coral woods Of the weltering floods, Over heaps of unvalued stones; Through the dim beams Which amid the streams Weave a network of colored light; And under the caves Where the shadowy waves And the swordfish dark,— Under the Ocean's foam, And up through the rifts Of the mountain clifts, They passed to their Dorian home. And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Grown single-hearted, Like spirits that lie In the azure sky. When they love but live no more. Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] THE CATARACT OF LODORE "How does the water Anon, at the word, There first came one daughter, And then came another, To second and third The request of their brother, Comes down at Lodore, So I told them in rhyme, |