You could not sing, nor yet could I,
1
If all your path ran smooth as glass,
A moving mirror of the sky,
In a long frame of quiet grass,
With fleur-de-lis and arrow-head,
To grace you as you pass:
You need rough pebbles for your bed,
7
And the ledged rock to make you strong,
Hurling you down from height to height
In frenzied leaps of panic white,—
To make you fierce for song;
Boulders that dance you round and round
12
With guttural jollities of sound,
And floors of shale, and walls of slate;
And many a time to lose your way,
17
'Mid snag and snarl and scummed morass,
In your bright wayward travelling—
Nothing to do but brim and wait,
21
Till, like the opening of a gate,
The valley comes, and down you fling,
Knowing so many songs to sing,
So many warbling ways of rhyme,
25
Kissed sweet again with mint and thyme,
Full throated with a thousand springs—
A singing victor, proud and strong,
That made of rocks his vowelled song.