Classic Poem

The stream meanders many a mile
By velvet meadow and rustic stile;
Past cottage gable and village spire
And maids in holiday attire;
O'er shallow reaches of shining sand,
Where patient cattle lingering stand;
Pallidly gleaming beneath the moon;
Glowing like gold in the setting sun.

But under the shade of a shaggy bank
Lieth a hollow dark and dank.
Alders, fringing the other side,
See themselves in the sluggish tide.
Above arises the wooded hill,
Haunt of the owl and whippoorwill.
No eye has pierced to the depths below,
Where stealthy currents come and go;
But the pool has many a secret dread,
Many a tale of the early dead,
Who, plunging down in its shadows gray,
Returned no more to the light of day;
Many a shriek and gurgling moan;
Many a bleached and crumbling bone.

What mysteries more its shadows hold
Never to mortal man were told.
But the stoutest diver shuns the leap,
And the swimmer turns with a wary sweep.
In the glare of noon and the morning gray,
And the mellow flush of the dying day,
It lieth there like a guilty soul,
And rustics call it the " Devil's Hole. "

Our life flows gayly and gladly on,
In the summer breeze and the summer sun,
But somewhere under a shaggy bank
Lieth a hollow deep and dank,
Where the eddies wheel in a serpent coil
And the turbid waters ceaseless toil,
Striving to drag their helpless prey
Forever down from the light of day.
Sin and Sorrow and Shame are there,
With baleful visage and demon glare.
Strive, swimmer, strive for thy perilled soul!
None cometh out from the Devil's Hole.