Craigie Waterfall, Perth.
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The Waterfall
| Behind the trees we heard the water fall Murmurous as life which is the voice of God; And our own isolate life was quieted Listening to this eternal murmur: We were content, staring upon that sound, To lose our voices in a greater voice; To pause, and look, and listen, and be still. And gazing thus our eyes were in a trance; Our ears were shells sonorous with the sea; Our sole self, brooding outward, was but sense Of transiency which watched the broken waters Fall like sand that falls within an hourglass. |
The seas of all the world were plunging here, Salty with every earth, their aery spume Flung upward, and dissolving smokily, Loosened its ghosts into the sunny air. We seemed a silence in a sea of sound; Yet our own blood, like to this waterfall, Was surging earthward, and was gathered up, And was part of all the seven seas; A stream of memory, itself a ghost Formed, for one instantaneous moment, Self-known upon the lighted arc of life. |
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