Classic Poem

Hardly who bends o'er Wayland bridge
Can tell which side the current flows;
In vain you mark the swaying sedge —
This way and that each eddy goes.

I drop a leaflet on the wave —
A crimson page from autumn's book —
Did ever thing so misbehave?
For less it moves as more I look!

They say the Sudbury seeks the sea,
But ocean to the eastward lies;
This dallying streamlet seems to be
Bound for the spring whence it had rise,

And lingers as it loved the meads
And mossy rocks where cattle stray
More than those dank, salt-smelling weeds
And breakers of the distant bay;

The lilied banks, the frequent gifts
Of apple blossoms drifting down,
More than yon cold and gravelly clifts,
Where vessels wreck and seamen drown;

And shuns to leave the sunny slope
Where maples, nodding o'er the brook,
Their branches to the oriole ope
And yield the summer thrush a nook.

Is it not so with us? We dread
In the great sea of love to lose
Our individual being, dead
To present images, and choose.

A life uncertain, full of pain,
Rather than on that unknown, dark,
Awful, unfathomable main
Put forth in such a fragile bark,

Dismantled of all tender ties
That make us feel content, secure,
And through life's aches and agonies
Bestow the courage to endure.

But One is watching o'er the deep,
As on the rivulet. We know
He giveth his beloved sleep —
A slumber that is end of woe.