by after the rains (2)
8:23 pm
Ever since I remember, I’ve been captivated by little burbly creeks, especially when they seem to appear where none were before, by the water dancing over rocks and soil, urgently, ever forward, downwards, forming little waterfalls, emerging out of hidden banks or boulders, then creating rivulets in the sand as it hurries down to the sea.
As I thought of this today, I kept trying to recall a poem I’d known ages ago, perhaps by Tennyson whom I loved in those long ago high school poetry classes. It kept niggling at me all afternoon so when my husband came home from work, I asked if he remembered something like that. Immediately he started to recite the first two lines:
Why hurry, little river,
Why hurry to the sea?
A little research rewarded us with a poem called The River but surprised us that it’s not by Tennyson, but by a Canadian poet Frederick George Scott (1861-1944). Here is the first stanza:
Why hurry, little river,
Why hurry to the sea?
There is nothing there to do
But to sink into the blue
And all forgotten be.
There is nothing on that shore
But the tides for evermore,
And the faint and far-off line
Where the winds across the brine
For ever, ever roam
And never find a home.
