Classic Poem

In a deep mountain lake there sailed a swan,
Far, far away from any human soul;
And daily swam with her a speckled trout,
Who only left her when deep thunder rolled—
Sinking far down where that swan could not dive,
So that she tasted bitterest pangs of love
And drooped upon the water like to die.
And when that trout came near with the blue sky
She brightened over the water like a sail
Set for the harbour after a winter gale.
No solitary ship sailing a land-locked sea
With her own shadow, and no lonely cloud
In water moored, abandoned by the wind,
To substance and to spirit cloven, seemed
So deeply one as that strange pair I dreamed,
Among the mountains woven in my mind. . . .

Morning and evening her song filled the hills,
The shepherds in the lowlands heard her cry—
Sitting like stones amid their scattered sheep—
And stood and gazed into the distant air.
The mountains sunk under grey woods of sleep,
In spring would wake, and shake a million leaves,
Flashing gold signals to the speechless sky,
Stirring uneasily in their mould-deep beds
Until the fickle fires crept away
And Autumn found them cloudier than before,
Breathed on the shining lake a phantom shore. . . .

And years went by, and never dimmed their love;
Her plumage shone as bright as winter snow,
And her bright image when the high stars gleamed
Still followed that frail shape that moved below,
Which could not cry, nor utter words of love,
But silent at her feet did ever move.
There came no herald crying “Dream no more!”
But the Night flew with large and glittering eyes,
Brushing its purple wings through the dark pines,
And when the day gleamed on the mirrored hills,
No shadow flitted through the water's ghosts;
For it had passed to some close-shuttered realm,
Some country fainter and more dim than theirs.
But on the lake a thing of fading snow
Glimmered away from that sky-covered world
Of air-drawn rock and hill and breathing wood,
Trembling, it stretched its snowy wings to rise,
Flashing bright shapes upon the calm, blue air,
Then drooped, and dimly sailed down those bright skies,

Sailed slowly on, in the cold voiceless hills,
Singing aloud until the lake did cry
With quivering mouth up at the empty sky,
And darkness soft as dew came dropping down. . . .

Into deep silence climbed the Hunter's Moon.