Now lend a patient hearing, and I’ll tell thee --Thou wilt receive it as a wayward dream-- The course of this old river. Know it glides Beneath thy steps, with lapse invisible, For but by glimpses mortals may behold it; And these seem far too glorious for one thought Of dull oblivion ever to intrude On the rapt vision. Not a shadow there From gloomy Hades clouds the living light That glances gaily down the rippling stream. But past description’s power, ’tis loud and bright With trumpet voices, and with silken sails Full-blown with Fortune’s breath; while from the bank Hope lifts her siren strain, and bids them speed For ever on to happy isles afar. And every ripple teems with springing thoughts-- In one sense faithful to the Samian’s creed-- A constant iteration of old fancies As if the wise and fools of time came back With their old dreams; forgetful of experience. There system swells on system, bubbles gay, Conventions, empires, powers, authorities, Song’s intellectual fabric, pictures, modes, Those myriad lights, the glory and the glitter Which make that current gaily beautiful. And so it rolls, in its magnificence Tumbling and sparkling up into the sun Like an eternal thing: buoyant and bright Beneath the airs of Heaven that murmur mirth And hope, and life, and pauseless interest. While on its living course no spot is seen That is not far too bright and glorious For the approach of grim decay, or that More mighty and more terrible shadow Death To find a cave to lurk in… … Thou wilt say, This is not Lethe, whose dull waters glide Sunless among the silent fields of death, Oblivion’s formless valley. Yet attend-- Mark well the course of each bright-crested wave:-- As it rolls by, the gallant barks it bore Are vanished, and have left no trace, as if They never had existence. Though for ever New shadows fast emerge into the Sun (So like the last, that scarce one notes the change), And take a look of immortality, Incredulous of the Past, blind to the Future; Not knowing whence they come, from what they are, Or whither tend. Alas, the stream With all that went before, is lost below In dim Oblivion’s world: It were a dream Most fleeting and fantastic, were there not A chain of awful consequence that binds What has been, with what must be. Death and Life, The Past, the Present, and the Future, are But names bestowed on one perpetual stream, In different provinces beneath the Crown Of Him who is the source from whence all comes And to whom all returns--we see no more But as the gazer from some narrow bridge Looks down upon the waters, when beneath They come from far, and so pass, and are gone. * * * * *