Classic Poem

Forth from the bosom of Elysian hills
The fountain-spring of life its current pours,
Translucent as the living lymph that fills
The fabled basin in Dorado's floors,
Rejuvenating famed in Spanish shores:
And down it rushes in its shining track,
And now it graceful sweeps, now madly roars;
Until in turbid current foul and slack
It spreads in pools as if to wander back.

As down its current, wider grown and deep,
The wearied traveller on his pathway wends,
Small pleasure from the landscape does he reap,
But finds in marshes black the tide distends,
Where in bewildering maze the prospect blends.
The gloomy cypress waves its dark attire,
The dim-lit vista in obscurance ends,
The ignis-fatuus lends its baleful fire
To lure its followers deeper in the mire.

But different far his pleasure-giving fate
Who would toward its fount the streamlet trace,
With step elastic and with eye elate
He views the short-lived bubbles' buoyant race,
And treads amid the flowers its bank that grace,
Where serpent-like it winds its sinuous course;
And as he wanders on with joyous face
This thought returns, armed with conviction's force,
Life's richest gems lie nearest to its source.