POETRY.

A SONG OF RIVERS.

LIGHTS upon the yellow Tiber are too beautiful to tell,

But the ancient poets praised them, and dead Emperors loved them well.

Dim Cathedral lights at evening flash from all the hills of Rome. He's a stately river, Tiber. There's a better stream at home.

Fierce by vineyards and by castles, in a fury flows the Rhine, And he sets the blood a-pulsing like a draught of gallant wine. Loud his road through quiet cities, in a rage he seeks the sea, And the peasants mourn his plunder. There's a finer stream

for me.

Still the Douro makes a music that it made for Moors in Spain, Of the wind in highland valleys, and the wrath of winter rain: Music fit for knights in armour, when the valiant trumpets call. But I yearn to hear the murmur of an English waterfall.

There's a torrent in Albania, where the faint red garnets glow Through the fend of waters, like the ghosts of blood shed long ago. Women wail by those sad waters for the sorrows that are there, And the oak-trees mourn for ever over drooping maidenhair.

0 the moonlit Seine is silver, and I know not what she sings,

But her song is surely haunted by the sweep of white swans' wings.

Like a sword she cleaves the night, and carries memories to the sea, Frosted gowns, and nobles courting, and a great King's revelry.

There are streams that are not waters. The Italian fishers know How the dolphins thread with silver tracks the wistful afterglow, Glades that cut a tangled forest, tides that sever seas asleep, 0 it's loved they are by cavaliers and the sailors of the deep.

There's a pathway to the sunset shines across a sea I love, There's the Milky Way of Heaven that the angels ford above, There's a pageant on the wheatfield when, the shadows flung aside, Morning lights a lane of poppies in a narrow scarlet tide.

By old sluices, weirs and channels, and deserted torrent ways, By processions and their incense, like a scented summer haze, By the lovely lakes of lilies, where the fairy woodlands are, By the light that rends the heavens at the falling of a star, By the Bosphorus and Jordan, by all Pagan streams and Frank, By the dog-rose and the myrtle, and the wild flowers on their bank, By the Spring song of the rivers when their life is treasured snow, By the waterfalls of all the world, my stream's the best I know.

You shall one day see my river where the pines and willows meet, Find a shallow filled with sunlight, let it sparkle round your feet. When I watch your face reflected in the stillness of a pool, I shall call my river still more dear, 0 you most beautiful.

BEN KENDIM.