POETRY.
ON KILLIN BRIDGE.
DARK stream, that forcest thy dark way Through rocks primzeval, lichened, grey, Thou evert not born of yesterday ; But long ere birth of social man, Ere plaided chief and tartaned clan.
Thy wave, dark stream, its course began ; Where gazing from his mountain-throne The strong-winged eagle reigned alone, And fishing from her mossy stone The heron sat, alone with thee, Wild water, thundering dark and free On to the vast, untravelled sea.
And so far hence shall come a day When we and time are old and grey, And time and we shall pass away ; And then, dark wave, last scene of all On this congealing earthly ball, One fate on thee and us shall fall.
Where manhood in its sternest mood From savage Nature wrung its food, Subduing all things to its good ; And maidens, wandering by thy stream, In fancy read their true-love dream On moonlit waters' flickering beam ; There, like a pall on dale and ben, Shall night and silence wrap the glen, With nothing left of mortal men, Save only, by a frozen wave, Some softly-mounded heaving grave Of buried hearts once true and brave : While all the cataracts of thy river, That seaward rushed with mad endeavour, Motionless stand, icebound for ever.
No sun, no moon, no flower, no tree, No life where all was living, free, No sound where once was harmony ; The great, good, work, from ages willed, Through ages gloriously fulfilled, Gone like a cup that's idly spilled, Rewaking to no second birth,
Its glories theme for cynic mirth, A charnel-house of buried worth; ,
Through darkness blindly doomed to steer, Time over, down the eternal year, Through freezing space a frozen sphere.
Thine end, poor world! But unlike thee We, when in death we cease to be, In darkness then begin to see; Begin to see, and clearer know The truth of things, and here below To understand this ebb and flow, And chance, and change, and mortal fate ; The good so often sent too late ; The ill so disproportionate ; And with this knowledge, as we move In being upward, learn to prove The length, the breadth, the depth of Love The sorrow never sent in scorn, The blossom neighbouring to the thorn, The blessed light of darkness born ; The ways of man, the ways of God, The gracious uses of the rod, The bleeding path by heroes trod ;— And knowing this we bow the head, And close the book, its riddle read ; If all is Love, then all is said. A. G. B.
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