The Secret Springs
WHERE are the secret springs, and where
The hidden source of sudden joy ?
Whence is the laughter, like the torrent, falling ? Whence The tears, the rainbow-scattered sunlight, overhead ?
Over the pinewood and the pasture and the pathway Rises the rockface where the bootnails scratch Smooth mossy walls, and the blind fingers reach Damp ferns in crevices, and icy pools.
Water on brant and slape ; the little streams Rise in the gullies and the squelching moss : Somewhere above the chockstone springs Joy, and the sudden halt -of tiny grief.
Summer will dry the rock-pool ; winter bind These, and the immortelles will bloom In memory, and in memory only, these Slow drops will fall.
Somewhere above the roekrose and the lichen, Even in summer, or midwinter, moves The powder-snow, the changing counterpart Of changing, and unchanging, sea.
Somewhere above the step, the springs of action
Rise, and the snow falls, and the seracs; and the green glacier-ice
Moves down like history, or like the huge Slow movement of a nation's mind.
Somewhere above the ice, unwitnessed storms Break in the darkness on the summit ridge And the white whirling avalanche Blends with the storm, the night, the driven snow ; And sunlight, and the dark, and gravitation,
These are all : these are the hidden springs, simplicity, And darkness is The epitome of light, and darkness, and all lonely places.
MICIIAEL ROBERTS.
Previous page
