Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1858-05-27
})oetltal.
From Harper's Monthly for June.
A Night Scene.
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYAN

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Oh River, gentle River, gliding on,
In silence underneath the staress sky
Thine is ministry that never rests,
Even whiel the living slumber. For a time,
The meddler, man, hath left the elements
Inpeace the plowman breaks the clods no more
The miner labors not, with steel and fire,
To rend the rock and he that hews the stone,
And he that fells the forest he that guides
The loaded vain, and the poor animal
That drag it, have forgotten, for while,
Their tolls and share the quiet of the earth.
Thou pausest not in thine allotted task,
Oh darling River through the night hear
Thy waveles ripping the pebby beach,
l hear thy current stir the rustlng sedge
That skirts thy bed thou intermttest not
Thine everlasting journey, drawing on
silvery train from many mountain brook
And woodland spring. The dweller by thy side,
Who moored his little boat upon thy be ach,
Though all the waters that upbore it then
Have slid away o'er night, shall find, at morn,
Thy channel filled with waters freshly drawn
From distant cliffs, and where the ril
Comes up amid the wnter-hags. All night
Thou givest moisture to the thirsty roots
OF the 1.-THE willow and o'erhangng plane,
And cherished the heritage on thy bank
speckled with little flowers; that sendest up,
Perpetually, the vapOrs from thy face
To Steep the hills with dew, or darken heaven
With marching clouds that trail the abundant showers
Oh River, darkling River what voice
Is that thou interest while all else is still
The ancient voice that, centuries ago,
Sounded between thy hills while Rome yet
weedy solitude by Theirs stream!
How many, at this hour, along thy course,
Slumber to thine eternal nurmurings,
That mingle with the utterance of their dreams!
AT dead of night the child awakes and hears
Thy soft familiar dashings, and is soothed,
And sleeps again. An airy multitude
OF little echoes, all unheard by day,
Family repeat, till morning, after thee,
The story of thine endless gongs forth.
Yet there are those who lie beside thy bed,
For whom thou ddst rear the bowers that
Thy margin, and didst water the green fields.
And now no voice so still that they
Can hear thy aspe their slhmbers, where thy voice
Louder than oceans, it could never break
For them the early volets no more
Opens upon thy bank, nor for their eyes,
Upon thy bosom when the goes down.
Their memories are aboard-the memories
Of those who last were gathered to the earth
Lingering within the homes in which they sat,
lowering about the paths in which they trod,
Haunting them like a presence. Even
They visit many dreamer in the forms
They walk in, ere at last, they the shroud
And eyes there are that will not close to dream,
For weepingand for thinking of the grave,
The new-made grave, and tine pale within,
These memories and these sorrows all shall fade
And pass away, and fresher memories
And newer scr rows come and dwell awhile
Beside thy border, and, in turn, depart.
On glide thy waters till at last they flow
Beneath the windows of the populous town,
And all night long give back the CLEAN of lamps,
And glimmer with the trains of light that stream
From halls where dancers whir A DINNER ray
Touches thy surface from the silent room
In which they tend the sick, or gather round
The dying: and slender, steady beam
Comes from the little chamber in the roof,
Where, with feverous crimson on her cheek
Plies the quick needle till the stars grow pale
There, close beside the haunts of revel, stand
The blank, unlighted windows, where the poor,
In darkness and in hunger, wait till morn.
There drowsily, on the halfconscious ear
or the dull Waterman, pacing on the wharf,
Falls the soft ripple of the waves that strike
On the moored bark but guilter listeners
Are near, the providers of the night, who steal
From shadowy nook to shadowy nook, and start
If other sounds than thine are in the air.
oh glide away from those abodes that bring
Pollution to thy channel and makes foul
Thy once clear current Summan thy quick waves
And dimpling eddies lnger not but hast,
With all thy waters, hast thee to the deed
There to be tossed by shifting winds, and rocked
By that mysterious force which lives within
The seas immensely, and yields the weight
Of its abysses, swaying to and fro,
The bilowy mess, until the stan at length,
Shall wholly pass away, and thou regain
The crystal brightness of thy mountain springs.