River of Life, oh! if thy waters were
As golden bright as from afar they seem
As thick with blessed islands, and as fair
As hope beholds them anchor'd in sweet dream;
If they were paved with gems of all delights
As lovers see them; I would sail with thee
Onward, for ever onward, day and night
And breathe in summer till I reach'd the sea.

Oh! I would lift my sail at break of day
And launching forward with a shout and song
Thro' shade of leaves and blossoms cleave my way,
And feast my heart with music all day long;
And when the purple and the gold of even
Flush'd the gray currents I would drop asleep
Watching with rapturous eyes the hues of Heaven
And their unnumber'd shadows in the deep.

But thy still places into whirlpools spin;
Thy free fair currents glittering in the sun
Change into shallows full of rocks within,
Or stilly into fatal cataracts run;
Thy shores lead into howling wildernesses
Thro' walks of rose, thy overshadowing bowers
Hide perilous caverns where the serpent hisses,
And dragons slumber underneath the flowers.

River of Life, lo! I have furl'd my sail
Under the twilight of these ancient trees,
I listen to the water's sleepless wail,
I fill mine ears with sighs that never cease,
If armed hearts come stronger out of Ill
The dust of conflict fills their eyes and ears;
Mine unaccustom'd heart will tremble still
With the old mirth and with the early tears.

From love’s first fever to her plague, from the soft second
And to the hollow minute of the womb,
From the unfolding to the scissored caul,
The time for breast and the green apron age
When no mouth stirred about the hanging famine,
All world was one, one windy nothing,
My world was christened in a stream of milk.
And earth and sky were as one airy hill,
The sun and moon shed one white light.

From the first print of the unshodden foot, the lifting
Hand, the breaking of the hair,
From the first secret of the heart, the warning ghost,
And to the first dumb wonder at the flesh,
The sun was red, the moon was grey,
The earth and sky were as two mountains meeting.

The body prospered, teeth in the marrowed gums,
The growing bones, the rumour of manseed
Within the hallowed gland, blood blessed the heart,
And the four winds, that had long blown as one,
Shone in my ears the light of sound,
Called in my eyes the sound of light.
And yellow was the multiplying sand,
Each golden grain spat life into its fellow,
Green was the singing house.

The plum my mother picked matured slowly,
The boy she dropped from darkness at her side
Into the sided lap of light grew strong,
Was muscled, matted, wise to the crying thigh
And to the voice that, like a voice of hunger,
Itched in the noise of wind and sun.

And from the first declension of the flesh
I learnt man’s tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts
Into the stony idiom of the brain,
To shade and knit anew the patch of words
Left by the dead who, in their moonless acre,
Need no word’s warmth.
The root of tongues ends in a spentout cancer,
That but a name, where maggots have their X.

I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret;
The code of night tapped on my tongue;
What had been one was many sounding minded.

One womb, one mind, spewed out the matter,
One breast gave suck the fever’s issue;
From the divorcing sky I learnt the double,
The two-framed globe that spun into a score;
A million minds gave suck to such a bud
As forks my eye;
Youth did condense; the tears of spring
Dissolved in summer and the hundred seasons;
One sun, one manna, warmed and fed.