Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy. 18441881830. The Fountain of Tears
IF you go over desert and mountain, | |
Far into the country of Sorrow, | |
To-day and to-night and to-morrow, | |
And maybe for months and for years; | |
You shall come with a heart that is bursting | 5 |
For trouble and toiling and thirsting, | |
You shall certainly come to the fountain | |
At length,—to the Fountain of Tears. | |
Very peaceful the place is, and solely | |
For piteous lamenting and sighing, | 10 |
And those who come living or dying | |
Alike from their hopes and their fears; | |
Full of cypress-like shadows the place is, | |
And statues that cover their faces: | |
But out of the gloom springs the holy | 15 |
And beautiful Fountain of Tears. | |
And it flows and it flows with a motion | |
So gentle and lovely and listless, | |
And murmurs a tune so resistless | |
To him who hath suffer’d and hears— | 20 |
You shall surely—without a word spoken, | |
Kneel down there and know your heart broken, | |
And yield to the long-curb’d emotion | |
That day by the Fountain of Tears. | |
For it grows and it grows, as though leaping | 25 |
Up higher the more one is thinking; | |
And ever its tunes go on sinking | |
More poignantly into the ears: | |
Yea, so blessèd and good seems that fountain, | |
Reach’d after dry desert and mountain, | 30 |
You shall fall down at length in your weeping | |
And bathe your sad face in the tears. | |
Then alas! while you lie there a season | |
And sob between living and dying, | |
And give up the land you were trying | 35 |
To find ‘mid your hopes and your fears; | |
—O the world shall come up and pass o’er you, | |
Strong men shall not stay to care for you, | |
Nor wonder indeed for what reason | |
Your way should seem harder than theirs. | 40 |
But perhaps, while you lie, never lifting | |
Your cheek from the wet leaves it presses, | |
Nor caring to raise your wet tresses | |
And look how the cold world appears— | |
O perhaps the mere silences round you— | 45 |
All things in that place Grief hath found you— | |
Yea, e’en to the clouds o’er you drifting, | |
May soothe you somewhat through your tears. | |
You may feel, when a falling leaf brushes | |
Your face, as though some one had kiss’d you, | 50 |
Or think at least some one who miss’d you | |
Had sent you a thought,—if that cheers; | |
Or a bird’s little song, faint and broken, | |
May pass for a tender word spoken: | |
—Enough, while around you there rushes | 55 |
That life-drowning torrent of tears. | |
And the tears shall flow faster and faster, | |
Brim over and baffle resistance, | |
And roll down blear’d roads to each distance | |
Of past desolation and years; | 60 |
Till they cover the place of each sorrow, | |
And leave you no past and no morrow: | |
For what man is able to master | |
And stem the great Fountain of Tears? | |
But the floods and the tears meet and gather; | 65 |
The sound of them all grows like thunder: | |
—O into what bosom, I wonder, | |
Is pour’d the whole sorrow of years? | |
For Eternity only seems keeping | |
Account of the great human weeping: | 70 |
May God, then, the Maker and Father— | |
May He find a place for the tears! |