Читать книгу The Parthenon - George Hobson - Страница 9

Oh, ecstasy of the enfolding cold stream

Clasping my limbs between the hills,

Issue of the run of snowmelt

Off high peaks, rippling in rills

Down the mountains to make a silver seam!

Hour by hour the broiling sun grills

My back as I toil up rocky trails,

Through fern and fireweed, over windfall,

Under placid pines with green tales

Of light and shade and silence on the old hills.

Where the purling stream awaits me sails

An eagle, circling slowly: sign

In heaven, like Christ’s bright star,

That Living Waters run here, mine

For the taking: that here the Lord unveils

His luminous glory. Waters, shine!

Quicksilver, flash! Make mountains sing!

Oh, listen! Currents rush, hissing;

Stones clunk on the bottom, thumping;

Air clamors; keen wind zithers in pine.

Waked out of heat by the sonorous ring

Of rocks and the quick-running stream,

I ease my limbs down into cold’s

Bracing clasp, cold’s blue dream

Of liquid motion, and, borne, go slipping

Over drowned rocks, by sunken trees,

Through a green watery medium,

Below bright bubbles chattering at the surface.

I fin, buried, and all blight

In me is drowned and swept away downstream.

Oh, I ache, recalling that ecstatic flight

Through mountain waters long ago!

There was all my youth contained

And summed; and there, in that pure flow,

Love washed me clean and folded me in Light.

Life’s truth defies the river’s current; so

I, going after treasures stored

In time’s alluvium, bring up gems

Not lost, as feared, but just ignored,

Being, far from past, the Future’s signs below.