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Home  »  Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse  »  The Waterfall

Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.

By John Keble (1792–1866)

The Waterfall

 
MARK how, a thousand streams in one,
  One in a thousand, on they fare;
    Now flashing to the sun,
      Now still as beast in lair.
 
Now round the rock, now mounting o’er,        5
  In lawless dance they win their way;
    Still seeming more and more
      To swell as we survey.
 
They win their way, and find their rest
  Together in their ocean home;        10
    From East and weary West,
      From North and South they come.
 
They rush and roar, they whirl and leap,
  Not wilder drives the wintry storm;
    Yet a strong law they keep,        15
      Strange powers their course inform.
 
Even so the mighty sky-born stream:—
  Its living waters from above
    All marred and broken seem,
      No union and no love.        20
 
Yet in dim caves they haply blend,
  In dreams of mortals unespied;
    One is their awful End,
      One their unfailing Guide.