Classic Poem

Pause in your resonant turmoil and patiently hearken
To me while I sing,
Rivers, whose fame I eclipse as a tempest will darken
The world with its wing.
Mine is the candid unmanacled liberty owning
No mortal's light sway;
Kindred am I to all winds in their moving and moaning,
And tameless as they.
One my circuitous roamings, my rhythmic pulsations,
With stars where they roll;
Man cannot fathom the fire of those large inspirations
That warm my great soul!
He that would utter my name in its meaning stupendous,
With all it enshrouds,
Must for the words that he uses take torrents tremendous,
Take mountains and clouds.
Lo, I am lifted above insubstantial traditions,
Nor heed while they pass;
Less to my forest-clad pride are a kingdom's transitions
Than dewfalls on grass.
All the base multiform passion whose energy urges
The heart of mankind,
Shelters among the brute creatures that wander my verges,
Thick-leaved, lavish-vined.
Here in my leopards and serpents are fostered and hidden
The crafts and the greeds
Wrought with coeval resemblance to longings forbidden
That sway human deeds.
Yet as the adequate symbol of virtues resultant
From aims that exalt,
Heaven at my summons will glass in these waters exultant
Her uttermost vault.
Discords are mine that can drown all the trivial dissensions
Of men far and near;
Euphonies float from my surge whose harmonious dimensions
Even gods could not hear.
Go where superb white audacity tells its defiance
In peaks robed with snows;
There shall you learn that infrangible bonds of alliance
Have bound me to those.
Go where the pinnacled ice rims the ghastly north oceans
Through months of keen night;
There, amid altitudes glacial and thunderlike motions,
Live moods of my might.
Breaths of terrific simooms, making caravans tremble,
Possess, while they fly,
Onslaught and turbulence, courage and speed, that resemble
This power that is I!
Be it the vast winding cave, or the Alp lightnings blister,
Or the cliff huge, austere,
Each in its grandeur profound I accept as my sister, —
Yet scorn as my peer!
Whence, in my vigorous attainment, my visage resplendent,
Till time shall have flown,
I, of all rivers terrestrial, am chief and transcendent,
Elect and alone!