Читать книгу The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861 - Various - Страница 6

I stood on the brink in childhood,

And watched the bubbles go

From the rock-fretted sunny ripple

To the smoother lymph below;

And over the white creek-bottom,

Under them every one,

Went golden stars in the water,

All luminous with the sun.

But the bubbles brake on the surface,

And under, the stars of gold

Brake, and the hurrying water

Flowed onward, swift and cold.

I stood on the brink in manhood,

And it came to my weary heart,—

In my breast so dull and heavy,

After the years of smart,—

That every hollowest bubble

Which over my life had passed

Still into its deeper current

Some sky-sweet gleam had cast;

That, however I mocked it gayly,

And guessed at its hollowness,

Still shone, with each bursting bubble,

One star in my soul the less.