Wonder of the Water. 239 



yet more fully of the light and shade, and to return 

 more readily its offering to the winds in tiny waves 

 and ripples, and swiftly interchanging sun and shadow, 

 exulting in happy "give and take." Onward and on- 

 ward, till over the gravel it goes dancing towards its 

 fullest, where it falls over a little ledge, bubbling and 

 singing to itself, figuring early manhood, with little 

 backward eddies, gusts of passion and desire, when 

 suddenly again it recovers itself, and sighing now and 

 then restfiilly as it laps the margins, passes on over 

 a slightly rocky fall into broader reaches, and then, 

 as if to mirror the absorbment of the man in the wider 

 and also the more intense and tender ties of life, it 

 pours itself into a bigger current, to find its way, not 

 lost but .transfigured, amid many influences, towards 

 the great ocean. 



" The wonder of the water is the song, 



It sings for ever moving on its way ; 

 Now charm of dropping notelets in the play 

 Of sun and shadow ; now the chorus strong 

 As tumbling o'er the rocks it doth prolong 

 Its passion-sobs in eddies circling gay, 

 In fretted glory as the branches' sway, 

 And then with dreamy murmur sails along 

 To catch a beauty from an ampler day, 

 Broad-breasted under sun or milder moon." 



Let me take you for a walk by the borders of a sweet 

 English stream that I know well, where, often I have 

 roved alike at early morn and dewy eve, in the warm 

 noontides of the sweet summer-time, and in the golden 

 afternoons of autumn, when nature spreads her richest 

 tints around, and the stream is ready to reflect it all, 

 showing here and there the golden radiance finely 

 transfigured in its bosom, like a dream, bringing indeed 



