The Waterfall

The song of the water     Doomed ever to roam,     A beautiful exile,     Afar from its home.     The cliffs on the mountain,     The grand and the gray,     They took the bright creature     And hurled it away!     I heard the wild downfall,     And knew it must spill     A passionate heart out     All over the hill.     Oh! was it a daughter     Of sorrow and sin,     That they threw it so madly     Down into the lynn?     .    .    .    .    .     And listen, my Sister,     For this is the song     The Waterfall taught me     The ridges among:     Oh where are the shadows     So cool and so sweet     And the rocks, saith the water,     With the moss on their feet?     Oh, where are my playmates     The wind and the flowers     The golden and purple     Of honey-sweet bowers,     Mine eyes have been blinded     Because of the sun;     And moaning and moaning     I listlessly run.     These hills are so flinty!     Ah! tell me, dark Earth,     What valley leads back to     The place of my birth?     What valley leads up to     The haunts where a child     Of the caverns I sported,     The free and the wild?     There lift me, it crieth,     I faint from the heat;     With a sob for the shadows     So cool and so sweet.     Ye rocks, that look over     With never a tear,     I yearn for one half of     The wasted love here!     My sister so wistful,     You know I believe,     Like a child for the mountains     This water doth grieve.     Ah! you with the blue eyes     And golden-brown hair,     Come closer and closer     And truly declare:     Supposing a darling     Once happened to sin,     In a passionate space,     Would you carry her in     If your fathers and mothers,     The grand and the gray,     Had taken the weak one     And hurled her away?