Romance

We were all boys, and three of us were friends;

And we were more than friends, it seemed to me: —

Yes, we were more than brothers then, we three....

Brothers?... But we were boys, and there it ends.

We never half believed the stuff

They told about James Wetherell;

We always liked him well enough,

And always tried to use him well;

But now some things have come to light,

And James has vanished from our view, —

There is n't very much to write,

There is n't very much to do.

I found a torrent falling in a glen

Where the sun's light shone silvered and leaf-split;

The boom, the foam, and the mad flash of it

All made a magic symphony; but when

I thought upon the coming of hard men

To cut those patriarchal trees away,

And turn to gold the silver of that spray,

I shuddered. Yet a gladness now and then

Did wake me to myself till I was glad

In earnest, and was welcoming the time

For screaming saws to sound above the chime

Of idle waters, and for me to know

The jealous visionings that I had had

Were steps to the great place where trees and torrents go.

Now in a thought, now in a shadowed word,

Now in a voice that thrills eternity,

Ever there comes an onward phrase to me

Of some transcendent music I have heard;

No piteous thing by soft hands dulcimered,

No trumpet crash of blood-sick victory,

But a glad strain of some still symphony

That no proud mortal touch has ever stirred.

There is no music in the world like this,

No character wherewith to set it down,

No kind of instrument to make it sing.

No kind of instrument? Ah, yes, there is!

And after time and place are overthrown,

God's touch will keep its one chord quivering.